


Painted in a Corner

by nirvhannahcornell



Category: Alice in Chains, Jerry Cantrell (Musician), Metallica, Soundgarden (Band), Stone Temple Pilots (Band)
Genre: 1990s, Accidental Cuddling, Accidental Kissing, Accidental Relationship, Affairs, Angst and Porn, Artists, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Crossover, Dark Past, Erotica, F/M, Friendship/Love, Grunge Fandom, Inspired by Art, Love Triangles, Mutual Pining, New Mexico, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Past Relationship(s), Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Prostitution, Reverse Chronology, Riot Grrrl, Romance Novel, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Southern California, Underage Drinking, Unrequited Love, art students, slow build in reverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:12:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 55
Words: 101,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirvhannahcornell/pseuds/nirvhannahcornell
Summary: Marie and her older brother Mark move out to San Diego in 1990 from Albuquerque to care for her disabled mother, and as she enrolls in art school, she develops a little fancy for a man named Jerry Cantrell. Meanwhile, she grows fascinated with a few other guys, including a local band called Stone Temple Pilots, by merely reading a magazine and starting her own. But she soon finds her best friend Gina is in a relationship with Jerry. And then Chris and Ben from Soundgarden and Lars from Metallica enter the picture from her letters to them...Inspired by Harold Pinter's play Betrayal, and by my own adventures in the rock world.





	1. The First Day of School

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my upcoming adventure with Alice In Chains and Korn on Labor Day weekend and the fact there’s a serious lack of slow burn in the grunge and Metallica fandoms. Dedicated to my parents, they’ve done so much for me; Chris Cornell, I miss you every day; and Lars Ulrich, for the sweetest and most obvious reasons 💜  
> “That’s worth saving for,  
> Put our heads down on the chest.  
> Mustn’t even race for rest,  
> Easy come, easy go...”  
> -“Romance”, R.E.M.

The time on the clock on the dashboard read ten thirty in the morning by the time I stepped into the school library. I still had a headache from the day before, pounding and pulsating upon the front of my head. I took an aspirin prior to leaving the house, but I knew I had to do more than the bare minimum to help myself. The past three months had been quite the long summer after all.  
I pushed the glass doors open and, once the sunlight faded out enough without obscuring my vision too much, I spotted Gina over by the window on the far side of the room. I fetched up a sigh because I knew I needed to tell her the truth about what had happened the five months before, back when she had her back turned to me and Jerry.  
The glow of the sunlight followed me all the way to the small rectangular window beholding a clear blue sky over San Diego. I took a seat to her right there at the heavy oak table so I blocked the streams of sunlight refracting on the floor on the other side of the room.  
The table in the back of the room. Perfect time for study hall, and the first study hall of sophomore year, at that.  
She nodded at me with a smile on her face from her book, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and also the book Dave gave her before the Pearl Jam show. On one hand, I felt glad I had nothing more than to read over my first syllabus of the quarter, and then draw up a plan so as to figure out my first project for my second year drawing class. But on the other hand, I fretted about telling Gina what had happened, especially since I knew after this summer, any secret had lost any glimmer of credibility whatsoever. One way or the other, she needed to know about Jerry and me, and Lars and me for that matter.  
The memory still hung fresh in mind with me. Even on the way home yesterday, I debated on whether or not I could tell Gina, that I could let the words escape my lips and slip into her consciousness. Even Dean and Rob objected to my telling her because the very notion nearly got the three of us killed. But I had not seen her since the sleep over and thus I had to strike up something with her.  
“Hey, Marie, I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said to me as part of her greeting.  
“I say the same to you, too,” I answered, putting my purse onto the top of the table. I took out a pencil, even though I had no use for it. I peered about the room to make sure we had plenty of clearance between the two of us and the few other students in there. It was one thing when I met Dean and I doubted anyone knew about him, but last year had left us and now STP had signed onto a label. It was another thing when we met Eileen, but we had a room of silence among us, silence in lieu of a wall of noise from thousands of music fans. But this was the two of us. This was me and Gina.  
I finally fetched up a sigh and gestured for her to move closer to me.  
“Can I tell you a secret?” I asked her in a near whisper.  
“Yes.”  
I sighed, because I knew those were her famous last words. I closed my eyes in hopes to brace myself. But even darkness surrounding me could not hold in secret another second longer.  
“I slept with Jerry,” I confessed. I opened my eyes to behold the sight of Gina gaping at me.  
“What!” she barked; the very sound of her voice causing to me to nearly jumping out of my chair.  
“I did. I slept with Jerry. Back in April, at the STP show.”  
“Why?” she demanded, growing furious. “What was going on? What were you guys doing?”  
“The two of us were tipsy, and—to be frank, I thought he was Lars and coincidentally, he thought I was you.”  
“What do you mean, you thought he was Lars?”  
She hesitated, bowing her head forward with her teeth gritted and her eyes locked upon me. “I thought you were going out with Chris?”  
“I thought he was Lars!” I declared, keeping my voice low so as not to disturb anyone in there. “He had that long hair and my sight was kind of blurry, so I just thought it was him. And yeah—” I cleared my throat before I brought my voice back down to a near whisper again. “I have plenty of feelings for Lars to go abound. I didn’t think I felt that way outside of my relationship with Chris, but it’s true.”  
Gina took off her glasses so as to rub her right eye, followed by her left. She picked up her bookmark to slip it into the part of the book before closing it, laying it on the table, and holding her chin up with her hands.  
“Well—if we are talking about this sort of thing, I should tell you that I slept with Ben,” she confessed in a single breath. My mouth dropped open. To think I had all of those fantasies of Ben and me sleeping with each other, and to understand why my latest edition of Painted in a Corner had been ripped to shreds and stuffed into that copy of The Rocket. She went ahead and did what I never could do for him.  
“R-R-Really?” I stammered. “Damn, Gina.”  
“Well, he was right there and--to be honest, I knew he wanted it. The next thing I knew—we started kissing and I was touching his chest. And if you’re wondering, his wife never found out.”  
“When was this?” I asked her.  
“Right after he came into the picture,” she answered in a grave tone of voice.  
“You mean like—right after we were introduced to him?”  
“Yeah. We’re talking within a week of meeting him. I just—I just—I felt it between me. And he told me there was a great deal of chemistry between us.”  
She rubbed her eyes again before holding her face in her hands. I flashed back on his telling me about his daughter and I wanted to vomit up my breakfast right then and there.  
“Dammit, Marie, why couldn’t you keep your damn tongue in your mouth?”  
“Back up, why are you blaming me?” I demanded. “You know I have a problem with obsession. Anyone who’s read my letters will know that I have a problem with obsession.” I let out an exasperated sigh.  
“Okay, you know what?” I suggested, still keeping my voice low. “Since all of this is out in the open now, I want you to do me a solid.”  
She lifted her face from her hands to flash me a look of disdain.  
“Neither of us speak about this to anyone. Ever. We’re friends. We should be able to talk about boys with each other. And I promised Jerry and Lars both to keep it under wraps, and in fact, I already feel pretty shitty that I said that to you. Dean and Rob didn’t even want me to tell you.”  
“Sounds fair,” she concluded with a sigh, and then she wrinkled her nose. “I slept with a married man. I can only imagine how that’ll play out for me.”  
“Could’ve been worse: I slept with a blond guitarist and a Danish drummer, the latter of whom insisted I give him belly rubs.”  
“What’s wrong with that? Have you ever had your belly rubbed by someone else before? It’s sexy as fuck.”  
“Explains why he was all moaning and groaning as if he was about to orgasm. I’m with Chris, but--” I sighed again, a much more mellow sigh. “--Lars needed to know how I feel about him. And I needed to tell someone other than him, because Metallica’s overseas now.”  
“But wait, what if they all get asked about it? You know, like with the tabloids?”  
“They won’t,” I assured her.  
“They won’t?”  
“No. Because they’re musicians and they’re all on tour right now. Dean told me that anything that happens with them behind closed doors is under lock and key. Anyone who tries to dig those sorts of things out of them probably has an ulterior motive and therefore cannot trusted. What happens here stays here.”  
Gina let out another sigh before she leaned back in her chair with her glasses in hand. I followed suit but with that pencil in hand. It was this very room she and I met one another, and it was this very room I found out she had developed a relationship with Jerry right around the time I wrote to him: a fellow new girl, a girl straight out of New Orleans, and thus, my best friend. She needed to know about my fling with him, and I needed to fess it up to her, and what better place than this very room.  
“The first day of school,” she stated aloud.  
“The first day of school,” I echoed. “Right back where we started.”  
“This time last year,” she continued: out of the corner of my eye, I could see her smiling.  
“This time—last year.” I couldn’t resist smirking, even though we both full well knew the secret would never escape us. We had the locks and keys, and the DeLeo boys protecting us if anything happened.  
What happens here stays here.


	2. The Rocket

The trip from Las Vegas back to San Diego took the three of us almost five hours, but we had left the hotel following Jerry’s phone call. Rob put the pedal to the floor before any of the police could find out what was going on with us. The last thing I saw out of the windshield was the Welcome to Las Vegas sign.  
So long, Sin City. Until next time.  
Even before leaving, I knew there had to have been a way out of it, especially after what Jerry told me and Dean just prior to checking out at the front desk. He assured us over and over again that we did nothing wrong, and that Sasha was after him and the each of us were mere collateral damage.  
I still felt terrible about Ray and Eileen, though, even after all they had done for Dave, Lars, Gina, and me a few months back. They lost their house--and Dave threw out his couch. On top of this, I had no clue if Mark felt willing to let anyone stay at his place in La Mesa, either, especially in the wake of what happened between him and Dad earlier this year.  
It took the three of us to reach Barstow and with the sun hanging low over the mountains by the time I realized I was clutching Ben’s letter in my hand as if I was about to let go free into the wild. His words seared through my mind. I was in disbelief that I had written and flirted with a married man, and on top of that, I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend, and with Lars, too. But on the other hand, I never felt more alive at that moment, even with the wind at my back and the possibility of a narrow escape from the police.  
I slept with two men other than my current boyfriend, and now I hunched down in the back seat of this black getaway car en route back to San Diego with Rob and Dean in the front seats before me.  
I slipped the centerpiece of the sunglasses down the bridge of my nose before I unfolded the letter to reread the words. To think I had written to him almost a year ago. A part of me wanted to forget about school the next day and transfer up to Seattle willy-nilly, but I had come too far in everything to forfeit it all at this point. I had to tell Gina everything as well: she needed to know that Jerry cheated on her with me, and his ex was on the run from the police, and he asked us to leave if we knew goodness for us.  
“What are we, a hundred miles from home?” asked Dean.  
“I think we are, yeah,” replied Rob. “It’s been a while since we’ve been out here.”  
I lifted my head so as to peer out of the window at the desolate desert all around us, lit up by the golden light of the late afternoon sun. I thought about Lars, and if he had already returned to the Bay Area: he bounced out of that hotel parking lot pretty fast. He was wearing tennis shoes after all.  
We wound through the north side of Barstow and continued along the Interstate into Victorville, followed by Hesperia, and then Cajon Pass. By the time we passed by the smooth points consisting of Mormon Rocks, and the sun sank behind the mountains, I took a glimpse over at Rob there in the driver’s seat, and right as he removed his sunglasses. He flashed a glance over at the side mirror next to Dean before merging over to the next lane.  
A gust of wind rattled the car but I knew we had to have been close to home since the first lights of San Bernardino emerged from around the bend in the road. San Diego was not too far away. The three of us remained silent the whole way back into town.  
Indeed, soon enough, I recognized the jacaranda trees lining the road to the north of La Mesa and El Tejon in spite of the incoming nightfall. I decided I need not swing by Mark’s apartment even though I considered it prior to leaving the hotel. Rob turned the corner and I recognized all of the neighboring houses surrounding Mom’s house. I knew the place was empty but I had hope Dad would show up to the house at some point over the course of that night.  
"I wanna thank you guys,” I told Rob and Dean as we pulled up to the curb: I peered out the window at the shadows blanketing the grass and the ramp leading up to the porch. I unfastened my seat belt, picked up my purse from the floor, and bolted up the walkway to the front step. I still couldn't believe it all had happened: everything felt like a whirlwind behind me. The inside of my ears whirred from the noise of the road. I could still feel Lars' hands holding me as he and I leaped out through the glass in the room. One thing was for certain in that I had quite the story to tell for that quarter at school if the opportunity ever arose.  
“Marie!” Dean called after me; I whirled around right as he jogged up to me. In the glow of the headlights from the car, I spotted he had the copy of The Rocket rolled up in his hand, the copy with the pieces of my latest edition of Painted in a Corner, pieces that separated some of the pages as if they were bookmarks.  
“Marie, you forgot this.” He handed me magazine. I gaped at him in surprise.  
“It was under my seat. I completely forgot I put it there.”  
“Thank you,” I said to him, as I gave him a quick embrace before stepping back into the dark house.  
“Take care of yourself,” he called after me as I groped about the porch with my free hand for that spare key.  
“You, too.” I lifted the doormat and felt the cold metal making up the key.  
“Call me when you guys get home,” I replied back to him as I held the screen door open with my hip. I unlocked the deadbolt and stepped into the front foyer. I reached over to the wall and switched on the overhead light. I shut the door behind me before I stepped into the living room. Dad hadn’t showed up from Las Cruces yet, but I knew he was on his way on the red eye.  
I plopped down on the couch without taking off my purse, and I let out a loud sigh. This was hell of a summer! A year, in fact. Enough had happened that perhaps I could continue Painted in a Corner after all. But one thing still baffled me and that was why the edition had been ripped to shreds in the first place.  
I opened the copy of The Rocket to the first page and then I tossed the magazine before me as if I had been burned. The page I had opened presented itself to me there on the floor. The very sight of it glared back at me; that drawing of me and Ben making out with one another. That drawing which haunted me more than Ray and Eileen’s house burning down and far more than the prospect of being arrested for prostitution. That was it!  
And I hoped Gina knew nothing about this.


	3. The Phone Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My mind has been a racin',  
> got something inside of me that's waking.  
> Come girl, come inside I know ya,  
> there's a fire inside of me that's growing.  
> Always took you to the limit,  
> one man falling off a precipice,  
> come on feel regeneration,  
> come in and feel the elevation.”  
> -”Come In, Come On” Velvet Revolver

Lars guided me back into the hotel room because the very news was enough to wipe me out and slap me silly. I was going to jail on the charge and premise of prostitution. Mrs. Hudson assured me that hookers were legal in Nevada, but we were in California when we were caught. He kept his arm around me as we returned to the room. I just wanted to grab my purse and the avocados he and I had bought earlier, and then drive off to the Bay Area together. The two of us could be alone at long last.  
He plopped down on the edge of the bed and reclined back on his hands. I ran my fingers through my hair before pressing my hands to my hips. The sides of my hands pushed back the sides of Rob’s denim coat so I could show Lars my bare waist. He tossed his hair back from his face.  
“So you wanna—?” he started in a husky voice.  
“Do I wanna what?” I asked him, unfazed. He stroked the top of the bed next to him to beckon me closer to him.  
“Have a little fun together?”  
“Right now?” I was taken aback by the suggestion.  
“Yeah. I have been seeing how you have been looking at me as of late, Marie. Min sexet pige.” He flashed me a wink. Oh, such a sensual man speaking to me in his native tongue of Danish, and to think of the next time when it happened again. That is, if it happened again; and to feel that tongue against my skin, tasting me and inching closer to the sugar glaze beneath my belt. His brow seared over his full face in that alluring Scandinavian form: there was no kidding myself anymore. I needed him.  
I eased into my seat on the edge of the bed next to him. I scanned the side of his neck. It was going to be Ray and Eileen’s house all over again, except we really were about to do it. The sight of his body brought the dampness back to right in between my legs. I inched closer to his face, and I lifted my hand to the other side of his head to touch his hair.  
The door flung open and Rob and Dean burst into the room, both of them panting and disheveled. The latter took a seat at the table on the other side of the room and bowed his head, while the former took off his mirrored sunglasses and wiped the sweat from his brow. Meanwhile Lars fixed the buttons on his shirt and I closed Rob’s jacket.  
“Marie,” Rob himself started, trying to catch his breath. “Have—Has the phone rang?”  
“No,” I replied, unsure of where this was going.  
“If the phone rings,” Dean gasped for air; he lifted his head and snapped his mouth shut to inhale through his nose: “—if the phone rings, it’ll be—Jerry. He—He has to tell you something important.”  
“I should go,” Lars suggested, smoothing his shirt.  
“No, no—stay,” Rob insisted. “You’re just as important as any one of us, Lars. You just stay right there on the bed.”  
The phone on the nightstand rang, and I lunged past Lars for the receiver. The three men behind me fell silent.  
“Hello?” I greeted in a soft voice.  
“Marie? Hi, it’s Jerry.”  
“What’s up?” I asked him.  
“Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, please. But I want you to know that Sasha is more after me than she is after you or Dean or Rob or anyone else.”  
“That still doesn’t explain why she’s trying to burn us all alive, Jerry!” I exclaimed.  
“Marie, listen to me--you guys are just kind of caught up in the middle of it all. She’s after me. But that said, you guys need to get the fuck out of there as fast as you possibly can. She’s crazy and hellbent on getting in between my lover and her friends.”  
I winced at the word “lover” but he had a point. I nodded my head.  
“And, oh, by the way,” he began again, “the cops are going to show up there at the hotel but she’s got more pressed against her than you or the DeLeo boys or anyone with you.”  
“What should we do?” I asked him, eyeing the three other men in the room with me.  
“Get out of there,” he advised, never changing the tone of his voice. “Really, grab all of your things and get the fuck out of there, fast. She’s gonna torch the place with you guys in it if you don’t get out of there.”  
“Okay.”  
“And, Marie?”  
“Yes?”  
A soft crackling emerged from his end.  
“Take care of yourself. No one can ever know about you and me. Not even Gina.”  
I swallowed. “Okay.” And I hung up the phone right at that. I turned to Lars, who licked his lips at me, and at Dean and Rob, both of whom were still struggling to catch their breath.  
“We need to get out of here,” I told them, running over to the closet on the other side of the room to fetch my purse and the room key. “Just grab our things and skedaddle.”  
“Why? What is going on?” Lars demanded; I turned around to see him standing to his feet and showing me a look of concern upon his lovely face.  
“Jerry told me Sasha’s going to torch the place--and she’s going to burn it with us in it if we don’t get out of here. He didn’t say when, either.”  
“Yeah, let’s get the hell out here,” said Dean, climbing to his feet and lunging for the door first. The four of us ran out of the room and down the hall to the elevator.  
“Oh, bless it--we’re only on the second floor!” Rob declared, guiding us to the stairs next to the elevators. He shoved open the door and we rushed down the metal steps to the bottom landing and the front lobby. We reached the pair of double front doors when the acrid smell of smoke caught my attention.  
“MARIE!” Lars shrieked. I felt his arms clasping onto me as I shut my eyes. He squeezed my waist as he pressed his body against me. The glass broke apart over our heads. The hard ground greeted us, but Lars protected me from the plume of flame shooting out from the other side of the room. It wasn’t the explosion Jerry had expected, but Sasha had started a fire for us.  
Lars panted right in my ear, which rang with the whir of the rush of everything.  
“Everyone alright?” Rob demanded, his voice sounding a thousand miles away.  
“Yeah--” Lars hung so close to me and yet he, too, sounded so far away from me. I opened my eyes to see his round face lingering before me and those lovely green eyes staring back at me. He clasped onto either side of my face and planted a kiss on my lips. I jerked my head back.  
“I’m still with Chris,” I scolded him in a voice loud enough for him to hear me.  
“I know--I just still want to feel you,” he insisted, kissing me again. I held onto either side of his head as I upped the ante on the kiss: his lips were akin to soft silk, as smooth as butter cream, under the bristle of his five o’clock shadow. The scruffy feeling of his incoming beard tickled me and sent a pulsation down in between my legs. I wanted to come in closer and give myself to him, this sexy Danish man cradled in my arms, and pressed against my body. His chest was firm, and his belly was soft and warm, and his hips protected me.  
“What the hell is going on over there!” I heard Rob yelp out, and it took me a second to realize he was referring to us there on the ground. Lars let go of my lips so as to take a glimpse over at them.  
“Oh, just, er—you know,” he sputtered, his cheeks turning into that light rosy pink. “—making sure everything is alright with her.” He patted my cheeks before climbing onto his feet; as he helped me up, I could feel the chemistry between the two of us. Just the way in which he held my hand as if he held a delicate structure of glass. His green eyes etched into my memory: I was going to dream about those eyes that night.  
Lars removed his hand to run his fingers through his hair, and then he stuck his hand into his pocket for his car key.  
“Anyway, I should bounce,” he announced.  
“Where are you going?” asked Dean.  
“Me? I’m going to back to San Francisco,” Lars stammered. “It’s—It’s better if I, er, do. You know, with the—the, er, constables coming and whatnot.” He turned to me in order to mouth something at me. I had no idea what he had said to me right then, but I showed him a sweet smile and puckered my lips at him as if beckoning another kiss from him.  
Sirens emerged from off in the distance.  
“We should go,” Dean advised.  
“What if the cops want to ask us questions, though?” I asked; we were witnesses to a crime after all, and thus it only made sense to me to linger around long enough to tell the police what had happened here.  
“We should go!” Rob exclaimed, clutching onto my hand and guiding me away from the shards of broken glass strewn upon the sidewalk. They led me back to their car there on the other side of the parking lot: the warm early afternoon wind kissed my hair and I felt the sweat beading upon my head. We piled into the car, and no sooner than I had placed my purse on the floor next to me and buckled my seat belt when I remembered something.  
“Shit!” I cried out.  
“What!” Rob glanced back at me with an alarmed expression upon his face.  
“My avocados!”  
“They’re probably long gone,” Dean told me, shaking his head. I let out a loud sigh and I knew he was right. Rob shut his door and started the car, and we sped away to the freeway back to San Diego.


	4. The First Letter

The first rays of the morning sun greeted Lars, Chris, and me as the bus pulled up to the edge of the parking lot of the hotel upon Tropicana Boulevard. We had escaped Sasha’s wrath, but now we had to deal with the overhanging fear that I could go to jail for prostitution, and Jerry for solicitation of prostitution. We were still in California when it all happened after all. But on the other hand, she was from Vegas and I never knew of her existence until the first time we came here a few months back.  
Even through the glass pane of the bus window, I could feel the heat of the day sinking upon us. I stood to my feet, and Lars and Chris followed suit in the seats next to me. I led them off of the bus and into the dim, deserted parking lot. No breeze blew about the place, which only made the place feel hotter. It didn’t help matters I was wearing Rob’s denim jacket and a pair of shorts; and underneath the jacket, I wore nothing but a bra. Meanwhile, I had disheveled hair, and I felt my lipstick had dribbled down from my lips and onto the front of my chin. I could feel it: I just looked like a prostitute. I was with two men, one my actual boyfriend, and the other a boy I had a mere interest in, but on the surface, the whole scene looked even worse than the situation proved.  
“Make sure nothing happens to her for me,” Chris told Lars.  
“You’re not gonna kiss me goodbye?” I asked him, hurt.  
"I already did, Marie, honey pie,” he told me, placing his hands upon my shoulders and looming before my face; he slid his hands up to the sides of neck. I swore for a second, that when he brought his face closer to me, he was about to kiss me right on the lips, but instead gave me delicate little butterfly kisses from his eyelashes right on my cheekbones. He held his face so close to me, and before we left Albuquerque, I could feel it in between the two of us. He was my boyfriend, and the other night just gave me proof of his love for me.  
“I have something for you,” he whispered into my face. He reached into his pocket for long thin sleeve of ivory white parchment paper. I picked up the envelope out from his hand: I recognized the address from Bainbridge Island there in the middle of the parchment. His penmanship scrawled about in solid black ink and there lay a note behind it reminding me to pay the postage. I made a mental note of it to take care of that at any time really the next day at school.  
“He told me. Call me any time, babe,” he whispered to me, “any time, really—day, night, on tour or not, doesn’t matter. I’ll be within range of a phone.” He leaned in a bit closer to give me a hug. I remembered I had Dean and Rob nearby me as well. If I couldn’t escape to the Bay Area with Lars, I could at the very least reach out to them.  
But I had such an odd feeling with Chris: I cheated on him. I cheated on him with one of his very best friends. And then I continued the infidelity with Lars, and after everything that happened between me and Mrs. Hudson, I felt rather wary around a phone at that point. I already had a bad feeling about receiving any potential phone calls from Jerry.  
He backed out from me and turned to Lars for a quick hug. They hung there for not even a minute from the incoming heat on the parking lot, and then Chris ran his fingers through his dark curls.  
“Alright, you guys take care of yourselves,” he told the both of us. He wheeled around and made his way across the parking lot back to his car, thus leaving Lars and me alone.  
“Come on, let’s get out of this heat,” he beckoned me to the edge of the parking lot and his little black car.  
“Hang on, Lars--I want to read this first before we go into the hotel,” I suggested as we stopped by the trunk: he slipped his hands into his jeans pockets to emphasize his hips. Lars really was a sexy boy, with his long luxurious hair and his sultry prominent brow for a slight edge over his soft features: truly a Northern gentleman. And then he had that beard beginning to sprout and grow along the edge of his round face.  
I shoved my purse behind my back, and slid my fingers underneath the back of the envelope, and revealed a handwritten letter from Ben himself:

“Hi, Marie—  
I've been meaning to write to you sooner. I've just been busy with recording Badmotorfinger and whatnot.  
You said you're kind of the new kid? Man, that blows. I know the feeling so much, except I moved when I was a toddler and then when I was in elementary school, we went in the summer time. But still: I feel for you.  
I want to thank you for the necklace you made for my wife—it looks absolutely beautiful on her. My daughter tried to wear it around her neck and it was a little too big for her.”

I stopped right there.  
“He has a daughter?” I said aloud.  
“Really?” asked Lars; and I felt my heart sink inside of my chest as I remembered the drawing I had made for my old project back in high school. “Oh, I am such a jackass.” I rubbed my eye with the side of my free hand.  
“But I am so relieved I never went that way,” I continued in a low voice.  
I parted my lips and let out a long low sigh as I proceeded with reading:

“Forgive me if I’m keeping this brief and maybe a bit terse but I needn’t risk my wife finding out about her husband writing a letter to a single girl.”

I felt for him there, given Sasha threatened to pop me with charges of prostitution.

“You seem like such a genuinely nice person and someone who just wants to reach out to those whom you feel are your own kind. And make no mistake: if I wasn’t married with a child, I would take you by the hand and find out more about the artist girl behind Painted in a Corner. I like you a lot, Marie. And I have to admit that when I got your letter, I started to question my life a little bit. I’m the bass player of Soundgarden and it took the power and the prowess of the written word of an artist to ease her way into my very being. I hope we can meet some day, and I know Chris will find a way for that to happen: he made it happen with me after Hiro left, after all.  
Anyways, you take care of yourself. I have faith you will go far in life with your art and the powerhouse that is your writing. I mean, shit, if you were able to worm your way into my brain and make me reconsider my personal life, I know for a damn fact you’ll go far.  
All my love, Ben.”

“Is everything alright?” asked Lars.  
“Yeah--yeah, it’s good.” But I struggled to hold back the tears. I crammed the letter into the belt of my shorts given I had no pockets. I hoped Gina knew about this as she, too, had bit of a thing for Ben.  
“Come on, let’s go upstairs,” I coaxed Lars, and we rounded the car before the heat could sink even more over us.  
I tripped on the sidewalk but I managed to catch myself before I fell ass over teakettle. Lars clutched onto my shoulder so as to catch me as well: the feel of his body next to me sent a trembling, tugging sensation down in between my legs. It was clear to me that I needed this boy with me. I needed him more than anybody else at that moment.  
He guided me to the elevator, and all the while, I had this feeling that something was about to happen here in the lobby. The feeling remained with me all the way back to Dean and Rob’s hotel room.


	5. The Bus Ride

“Okay so what are we gonna do?” asked Chris. The three of us had stopped walking so we could congregate at the back of the shack down the block from Mrs. Hudson’s old house. It was some shade for us given the sole trees about the street were Joshua trees.  
After the last one, neither of us had any idea what to do next. All I could think of was finding some way of some sort back to San Diego because I had school to start within the next two days and Lars and Chris both had their cars still back in Vegas, just so long as the police didn’t catch up with us and throw charges of prostitution at all of us.  
“Well,” I started, adjusting the strap of my purse, “we can't go back to Mrs. Hudson’s house—she’s gone back east now. We can’t keeping walking, though--it’s too hot. And I’m not even wearing a shirt underneath this thing.” I lifted up Rob’s denim jacket  
“What’s this back here?” Lars gestured to the short wooden shack behind us; we turned to take a better look at the outside wall, and the edge of the awning over Chris’ head.  
“A new safe place, methinks?” I wondered aloud. Chris poked his head out from the side of the shack first and thus the golden light of the afternoon sun shone over his face: the roots of his long wavy black hair glimmered in the sunlight. He gestured for Lars and me to follow him around the shack to what resembled a door: the rusty doorknob looked to be falling out of its socket and the door itself was too small for the doorway. But Chris still held onto the knob and, careful not to yank it off like Dave did during the fire, turned it to the side, and eased the door open.  
We were met with a rather small, cramped, and stuffy room with a faded, lumpy couch and a rickety wooden side table next to the right arm: one window to the left of us had a pair of heavy, burlap curtains; while to the right stood a doorway to another room.  
“There’s a telephone in here,” Chris pointed out. I peered across the room at the side table and, sure enough, there stood a black telephone with a dial. I lunged for the phone and lifted the receiver. A dial tone hummed right into my ear.  
“It works, too,” I told him. I took a seat there on the couch while Lars squeezed through the sliver between the edge of the doorway and Chris to investigate the next room over. Meanwhile, Chris himself backed out from the doorway to stand in the light breeze and bask in the glow of the afternoon sun.  
I stuck the tip of my index finger into the first notch of the dial and rotated it down: I let it go and dialed the next number, followed by the next one, and the next one, until I reached the house phone back in San Diego. I pressed one for the answering machine. Meanwhile, the door swung closed, and the shack shuddered in response. The air in the shack stood still, that is until Chris opened the door again.  
I hung up the phone next to me as he picked up a rock from the ground so as to prop the door open.  
“Dad just called the house back in San Diego,” I announced as he entered the shack, “he’ll be flying in from Las Cruces tomorrow night, so I know I won’t be alone for the first day of school.”  
“When do you go back?” asked Chris, knitting his eyebrows together. Lars emerged from the next room and rested his hands on the edges of the doorway.  
“Monday,” I replied.  
“Next Monday?”  
“This Monday. Two days from today.”  
“Fucking shit.”  
“So that means we and the DeLeo boys have to get you back to San Diego by--some time tomorrow,” Lars followed along, “but our cars are all back in Vegas, though.”  
“Yeah, and Dave threw out his couch after we left La Mesa, too,” Chris pointed out.  
“Oh, right, right, because of the fire at Ray and Eileen’s house,” Lars recalled, “which means she is going to have to go back with them instead of us.”  
“So what are we going to do, though?” I asked them. “My parents’ house burned down, Jerry and I both might get charged with prostitution, there’s a crazy woman after me, Mrs. Hudson went back to Pennsylvania, and I start school in two days. I also had to take Rob’s jacket because I lost my shirt.”  
“Jerry took Gina’s jacket, too,” Chris recalled.  
“Jerry took Gina’s jacket, too! But he took it to protect it from the fire. My hope is that he brings it back before the first rains come in, though.”  
The three of us fell into silence for a moment, and then Lars spoke again.  
“Hang on--when I was in the other room here, I saw a window. And--er, I shall return.”  
He ducked out of the shack into the warm New Mexican afternoon, leaving the two of us alone. Not even a minute had passed since Lars left the shack when I felt Chris’ hand on my thigh.  
“Chris, please, it’s too hot,” I begged him.  
“There is no denying it anymore,” he whispered to me. “I need to be closer to your flesh.”  
It was that moment I realized I caught myself up in quite the pickle: on one hand, I had found a little Danish man who was kind, sweet, and funny, and hot, too, and I had told both of my parents about him. But Chris had flesh, and substance: he was raw and real, more raw and real than Jerry. He was my boyfriend now, leaning into my face so as to kiss me. He showed me those soft looking, sensual lips.  
“Marie?” Lars’ voice echoed out from outside. I relaxed and brought my whole body at ease. But I also wanted Chris to kiss me again.  
“Yes, Lars?” I called back to him, and he emerged from outside with his shirt unbuttoned and his hair disheveled. He loomed there in the doorway so a shadow blocked out the front of his body.  
“There is a bus stop down the block from here,” he answered, gesturing behind him.  
“There is?” I asked him, feeling a dead weight lift off of my shoulders.  
“Yes! I just saw a bunch of people walk towards a kiosk down that way and my guess is that it is a long distance thing.”  
“So, we could ask around and see if it’s going out to Vegas, oh Lars, you’re a life saver!”  
I stood to my feet and lunged for the door: Lars led me and Chris back out to the daylight; the latter kicked out the rock so the door of the shack would swing shut. We walked together down the sidewalk, past the mission style houses and the houses with the terra cotta roofs and low shrubs accompanied with prickly pear cacti, all the way down to the kiosk and bus stop in question.  
We stepped into the brick building, where we were greeted with a blast of soothing, cool air over our heads. I headed up to the counters first: I tugged the denim jacket shut to protect the sight of my bra and my bare skin.  
“’Scuse me, is there a bus that goes to Las Vegas?” I asked the teller. “Nevada?”  
“Yes, there is,” she replied with a nod.  
“Oh, thank God--I’ll take three tickets, please. One way.”

“This ride is going to take us how long?” Lars asked, snuggling next me on the neighboring seat even though the afternoon heat slammed upon us from the other side of the aisle.  
“Sixteen hours,” I replied, “if it’s two o’clock now, we’re gonna get there at about five thirty in the morning.” I leant in closer to the side of his face.  
“So when the sun goes down, don’t be afraid to snuggle in closer to me,” I whispered into his ear. He turned his head to flash me a wink. Such a cute boy.  
Out of the corner of my eye, Chris’ fingers slithered onto the side of my thigh, and yet I had Lars right next to me as we leaned up against the seats on the wall behind the driver. Soon, we rolled off of the lot and headed out west with the final destination being in the very heart and soul of Las Vegas.  
So long, Albuquerque. You will always be in my heart and I hope next time, things will go better than they did with us.  
And indeed, after the sun went down, and the time approached midnight, Lars leaned his head against my shoulder and dozed off. Chris, meanwhile, never took his hand off of my thigh.


	6. The First One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “And I heard that his brother was a Viking,  
> he liked to solve a problem with a gun.  
> If you want to know the facts, you gotta teach him how to act  
> and I hate cough syrup, don't you?”  
> -”Cough Syrup”, Butthole Surfers

I awoke to that bright, warm sunlight that I knew so well from my childhood days in Albuquerque, the kind that always filtered through my bedroom window in the house there on Hermosa Drive. I could hardly believe how much I had missed the shadows of the Joshua trees upon my face as I rolled over onto my back to better feel the cool breeze on my skin from the open window. The coolness of the breeze combined with the gentle warmth of the soft light blue blanket that Mrs. Hudson let me borrow for our stay here, that is until we found a way back to San Diego. But then something brushed up against my leg, something warm and soft like human flesh.   
I opened my eyes and rolled my head over the top of my pillow: he lay on his side with his face buried in the pillow next to my head. I examined the curvature of his bare shoulder and the smooth, toned skin making up his upper arm. The hair on the side of his head dangled in his full, round face, while the bangs on the crown of his head had been pushed up from the pillow.  
“Lars?” My voice broke from sleep and from the arid climate.  
He groaned inside of his throat and buried his face further into the pillow, but he never awoke. The pillow emphasized the tip of his button nose and his chubby little apple cheeks. I cleared my throat as I rolled over a bit onto my back. I brushed my fingertips against his face so as to move his hair back: his skin was silky and warm, and his face was plump and gentle.  
“Lars,” I whispered into his face, “Lars—” I had to stop myself from referring to him as “babe” given I had not promoted him to my boyfriend as of yet.  
He shuffled the side of his face about the top of the pillow: I caressed the soft skin making up his cheek and the sweet shape of his face. He groaned in his throat but he still refused to awake right at that moment.  
I stroked his bare shoulder and I thought of kissing him on the cheek when his eyes popped open, those green irises gazing back at me from their deep sockets.  
“Are we awake?” I asked him in a gentle coo of a voice.  
“Yes, we are,” his voice emerged out of his mouth in the form of a tiny squeak. “Are we lovely?”  
“Well, I dunno ‘bout lovely,” I brushed him off.  
“Oh come on, darling,” he coaxed me, lifting his head from the surface of the pillow so as to show me the left side of his face and the plump, refreshed skin. “You are indeed beautiful and lovely. I mean you are obviously quite beautiful—and you are lovely enough to have let me sleep next to you in your childhood bed...”  
I took a closer look at him and his gentle features. Maybe it was his brow, or perhaps it came from something else, but every time I took a glimpse at Lars, a tickle made its way in between my legs. He swallowed and the flesh under his chin swelled a bit; he closed his eyes for me, and I continued to examine his face and his features.  
“Your cheeks,” I began in a mellow voice, “—they look so soft and cute. Everything about you is so soft and cute—and sexy.”  
He opened his eyes, those deep set green eyes, and stared back at me with his face still pointing straight up at the ceiling tiles.  
“Sexy,” he repeated, his voice breaking; he cleared his throat and puckered his lips as if beckoning a kiss from me. I tried to roll more onto my side but there was only so much room on my old twin bed, and thus I improvised, putting my right arm around my waist to give him room.  
“So how did you get in my bed?” I asked him.  
“How did I get in your bed?” he echoed.  
“Yeah.”  
“You had fallen asleep and there was nowhere else in the house to sleep, and so, carefully not to wake you, I slid under the covers.”  
“Nowhere else in the house to sleep? Not even my parents’ bedroom?”  
“Nah, Gina and Jerry are in your parents’ bed. Your brother’s room is empty and Chris is on the couch. And so I decided on your bed. I grabbed a spare pillow out of the linen closet and made sure I did not wake you.”  
He rolled over onto his side and the top of the blanket slid down from his chest, which in turn exposed his nipple and most of his chest. He lay so close to me, and I could feel the warmth radiating from his hips.  
“You know,” he began again, clearing his throat, “it is just you and me here right now. As far as the two of us both know, we are the only ones awake in the house.”  
“What are you implying?” I asked him.  
“Oh... you know.” He pushed the top of the blanket down even more to show me the side of his body, the soft silky, slightly thick flesh on his hip and making up the slight curve of his waist. Still quite toned but with a little bit of padding to go around.  
He lay a mere inch from me: Lars was right there and I could stroke the pads of my fingers along his skin if I wanted, or needed. I needed to touch him, to nestle closer to his body and feel his warmth and his comfort.  
I peered down at the gentle round curve around his waist, around his belly button.  
Thick, beautiful flesh, just waiting to be caressed. I lifted my hand from my side and reached out to his hip, but I lingered right over his skin. I wanted to touch him, but I was reticent in going through with it. I couldn’t understand it: I wanted him and I knew I must have him all to myself, but I hesitated in going through with touching his skin.  
God... so full, such a full healthy shape, and I could picture him even fuller and rounder, which meant his skin softened even more.  
“Come on... you know you want this, Marie,” he coaxed her. “Rub my belly for me. Please. Just put your hand right there—” He gestured to his waist. “—and feel me. Come on closer to me and love me.” He cocked out his hip a bit to make himself appear even fuller and more sensual. My hand hung still there, about an inch over his waist. I wanted to touch him, and I knew if I neglected to touch him, the two of us would leave this room starved. There was no denying the desire from my flesh, or from the inside of my own toy box.  
I brought my fingers even closer to him: I glanced up at his face, at his eyes staring back at me and searing straight into my soul. If I was to touch him, I needed to lock onto his eyes and never let go. It all felt too much to bear right there in my bed.  
“Marie?” Gina’s voice floated in from the hallway. I curled my fingers into the base of my palm. He closed his eyes as he let out a sigh through his nose. He tugged the blanket back over his body and hunkered down in the bed.  
“Marie? Are you awake?” she repeated.  
“Yes?” I called out to her.  
The bedroom door swung open, and she stepped into the room, and hung there over Lars’ body. She glanced down at him right as he shut his eyes.  
“Is he awake?” she lowered her voice to a whisper so light she may as well have breathed.  
“Oh, yeah,” I assured her. “If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t’ve called out to you.”  
She flashed me a smirk. “Did you guys--?”  
“No. But, if he was asleep, I’d definitely consider it when he woke up.” I peered down at his face right as he flashed me a wink.  
“Well, how ‘bout you?” I asked her. “Did the two of you sleep together?”  
“Nah, Jerry had a bottle of hooch before we went to sleep last night and he totally passed out,” she grumbled. She cleared her throat. “Anyways, I came in here to tell you guys that Mrs. Hudson--you know, down the street?”  
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”  
“She called a little bit ago--apparently, she’s moving.”  
“What!” I was taken aback by the that. “No!”  
“Yeah, she’s moving back to Pennsylvania, saying she’s sick of the heat here. So she’s not wasting any time and moved most her things back, and she’s leaving later today. She added that since she heard you’re--” She gestured at me. “--you’re back in town today, as a good-bye she’s making breakfast for us.”  
“Breakfast?” Lars blurted out, rolling over onto his back and into an upright position.  
“Breakfast,” Gina echoed with a grin upon her face, backing towards the door. “I’ll let you two babes get dressed.”  
She returned to the hallway, thus leaving the two of us alone in my bedroom. I peeled the blanket off of me and swung my legs around so the soles of my feet lay flat.  
“I should take you to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum,” I told him, “seeing as you crave a little sugar in your tea.”  
I scanned the faded beige carpet: I never understood why Mark wanted Dad to put in this hideous carpet when we had those beautiful smooth stone tiles in our bedrooms. I missed something.  
“Where’s my shirt?” I wondered aloud.  
“The one you wore yesterday?” he asked me.  
“Yeah. Here are my shorts--” I picked my shorts off of the chair in the corner and put them on over my panties. I covered my chest with my forearms and my hands when I turned around, but Lars did not take any notice as he scanned the floor for his clothes. When his back was turned, I lunged for my closet for one of my black bras and slipped that on over my body. I turned back around right as he stood up and pulled on his jeans.  
“You know we’re in the desert,” I pointed out; he turned around to look at me wagging a finger at him, “and it’s still hotter than hell out here this time of year.”  
“You should go like that,” he nodded at me, and a smirk crossed his chubby face.  
“What, like this?” I gestured at my bra and my shorts, and he nodded as he let out that sweet little giggle. I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Copenhagen?”  
“Mr. Copenhagen,” he chuckled; he tossed a bit of his hair back from his bare shoulder before he spread his legs and posed his arms next to his head as if he had a bow and arrow in hand. “Yes, I would like to submit my resume for to be a male supermodel, behage.”  
“I think you gotta be a certain weight, though,” I pointed out to him. “You know, chubby, sweet looking little tummies and a little pillowy softness over the hips is strictly forbidden.” He dropped his arms right then.  
“It mustn’t be!” he declared. “It mustn’t!”  
“That said, you should go like that,” I retorted to him, returning to my closet. Rob had left his denim jacket in my closet when they came here in April; I made a note to give it back to him when we saw him and Dean again as I yanked it off of the hanger and slipped in on over my body.  
“Now, that is a look,” Lars stated as he headed for the door. I put on my Chucks and slung my purse over my shoulder as I followed him out to the hall.  
“You’re not going to Mrs. Hudson’s house without a shirt,” I teased him as we strode into the living room, where Chris slouched on the couch and rubbed his eyes.  
“Who’s not going without a shirt?” he asked us in a broken voice.  
“Him,” I pointed at Lars.  
“Oh, yeah, your shirt’s over there, man.” Chris gestured across the room to the recliner and Lars’ dark blue button up shirt thrown over the top. Once Lars had crossed the room for it, Jerry and Gina emerged from down the hall. I pursed my lips at the sight of him, and I knew I had to give up the ghost and tell her the truth at some point. I had to tell her that I slept with Jerry, but I had kept a promise with him to keep my lips sealed.  
“Should we turn on the air conditioner?” Gina suggested as she adjusted the strap on her purse and Lars left the top two buttons on his shirt unfastened.  
“I’d say ‘yes’,” I answered, “but the pilot light malfunctions. Even if we did, it’d still be like an oven in here. That’s primarily why my dad hates this house. So, I say let’s just leave the windows open and then we’ll boogie back here soon enough.” I reached into my purse for my sunglasses and the five of us stepped out into the warm late summer morning. It was still early and yet I could feel the heat of the day upon us.  
I led us down the walkway to the sidewalk. At the end of the block, I recognized Mrs. Hudson’s low ranch style house with the three Joshua trees arranged in a perfect triangle in the front yard and the olive tree on the side. I reached the front step first, and the brass numbers on the side of the house entered my view. I rang the doorbell right as Lars reached the doorstep himself and stood next to me. He had a soft glow about his face from the warmth of the morning sun, but he hadn’t broken into a sweat as of yet.  
The front door behind the screen swung open and Mrs. Hudson, wearing nothing but a smile and a camisole, and accompanied with the smell of toast and sausage and the blast of cool air greeted us.  
“Good morning, kids!” she declared, pushing her rectangular glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Just in time, too--it’s nearly ready.”  
She unlocked the screen for us, and we congregated into the front foyer of the house; Chris shut the door behind us and we proceeded into the kitchen with the cool fresh air from the air conditioner upon our heads.  
It was so strange seeing Mrs. Hudson’s house empty with nothing more than a few chairs and a tiny table hardly big enough for three of us, much less all of us: thus, Chris, Jerry, and Lars all volunteered to stand next to the bar and eat off of the paper plates. Her nice china plates with the red and green chili peppers along the rims and the forks with the bubbly handles had all been packed away.  
Before entering the dining room, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see Chris gesturing me back into the once luxurious living room. I fixed Rob’s jacket and gazed up at him as I pressed my back against the wall.  
He leaned towards my face as if he was about to whisper something to me. But Chris lifted his hands up to the sides of my neck. I clasped onto his wrists and jerked my head back.  
“What are you doing?” I demanded in a hushed voice.  
“Doing what you want me to do,” he whispered back to me. I could feel the electricity between us again. Such a tender man and with such a large heart full of love. I did say “yes” to him. He was about to lean into my face for a kiss when Gina emerged from the dining room, thus interrupting us.  
“What’re ya’ll doing?” she asked us with a puzzled look upon her face.  
“Oh, we’re just talking,” I covered for us. I fixed the jacket again: it was too large for me but I knew that, had it been smaller, I would have broken a sweat even with the air conditioner on over our heads. Chris flashed me a wink and the two of us doubled back into the dining room for breakfast.  
I sat next to Gina at the table, who in turn sat next to Mrs. Hudson. I thanked her for breakfast and I begged for her to stay in Albuquerque.  
“I’m sorry, babe--but I just...” She fetched up a sigh. “I can’t take this heat anymore. It’s sucking me dry, too, so I need to be back where it’s cold, and cheap to live. So, once we’re all done here, I’m picking up these chairs and climbing into the car and going to Pennsylvania. I’ll be leaving this table here: I’ve got plenty of tables.”  
Once we had finished our food--and Lars took thirds for himself because she told us she didn’t want leftovers--we put the paper plates in a garbage bag and Jerry offered to take it out to the cans outside. Gina fixed the strap on her purse again and gave me a hug as if telling me good-bye.  
“I’ll see you back in Cali,” she told me in a soft voice.  
“Wait a minute, you’re leaving?”  
“Yeah, Jerry told me he bought me a plane ticket and he’s driving me to the airport. He’s gotta go back to L.A. and take care of something. Something about him and his ex...” Her voice trailed. “Anyways, I’ll see you on Monday.”  
“Oh, yeah, that’s right!” And then she bowed her head to look at me over the purple rims of her glasses.  
“Medusa,” she whispered, and I flashed her a smirk.  
“I am Medusa,” I replied to her in an equal whisper. “What was your pen name again? I forget.”  
“Persephone,” she answered.  
“Oh yeah, that’s right!”  
We hugged each other again, and then she and Jerry headed back out to the furnace outside. Mrs. Hudson was about to hug me good-bye for good and with tears in her eyes when I remembered the blanket in my room.  
“Wait, I have to go back to the house for a moment,” I told her, “the blanket you gave me.”  
“Oh, you can keep that, honey,” she assured me. “I’ve got plenty of blankets now.” She embraced me, followed by Lars and Chris.  
“There’s a park nearby here--let’s go there and sit in the shade,” I suggested to them as we strode towards the front door, “‘cause it’s hot but it’s not that hot as of yet.”  
As I opened up the front door, I spotted Jerry running up the lawn with a look of concern on his face.  
“Oh, hey, you guys better get out here quick,” he warned me, out of breath, “something happened.”  
“What do you mean, something happened?” Chris demanded. I pushed open the screen door and the three of us followed Jerry back out onto the lawn. In spite of the heat, we hurried down the sidewalk just in time to see the flames lapping out of the front windows of my parents’ house, the house I grew up in. Part of the front door started to singe and burn; a column of dark brown smoke billowed out of the chimney. I hoped Dad would be back in San Diego soon because I had no idea what to say to him if I had the chance.  
“OH MY FUCKING GOD!” I shouted. “It’s on fire!” I felt a lump in my throat right then. I turned to Lars and the horrified look on his face. I threw my arms around him because I had no clue as to what else I could do. Chris stood back and ran his fingers through his hair.  
I let go of Lars because it was too hot, but then Jerry came closer to us, his eyes gleaming and his lips pursed.  
“Sasha,” he declared, pointing back at the burning house. “That fucking bitch, I swear to God. This is actually all my fault but still--”  
“I have no shirt, either,” I wept. “God—God dammit.” I sniffled and peered across the street at Jerry’s car, and Gina in the front seat.  
“Go--Go take her to the airport,” I ordered him, “she’s gonna miss her flight.” Jerry put his arms around me right as the tears burned my eyes. He let go of me when the warmth between us proved to be too much; he gave quick embraces to Chris and Lars before returning across the street to the car. Sirens emerged in the distance.  
“Can’t go back there,” Chris gestured back to Mrs. Hudson’s house.  
“No, we can’t--she’s leaving in like three minutes,” I answered, sniffling. “Come on, let’s walk over to the park and figure out what to do next.”


	7. The Jacket

The time nearly struck at one in the morning by the time we landed in Albuquerque from Las Vegas. I wanted to stay at the house and call up Dad because I knew he would be in Las Cruces at some point or another, and then perhaps he could make the drive up to the house. I was back in my city and granted, I had my best friends and my boyfriend with me, but a tiny sliver of me needed my parents. But all I could do was wear a brave face: I had already rolled out of the nest and stepped away from Mark when Chris and I made our promise to one another. I needed to uphold that promise, both to him and to myself. I had already been to three shows with Gina and one with Chris: I had to brave it stepping into that house and going inside with nothing more than my friends with me.  
I clung to my purse as we climbed off of the plane, and crossed the airport to the large sliding front doors, and stepped out to the parking lot with the New Mexican heat still lingering all around us. Jerry pointed out his small black car in the front row: I knew it would be a tight fit for the five of us.  
“Just a word of warning,” he told us as we congregated around the car and he unlocked the driver’s side door, “the passenger side window is stuck shut and the air conditioner doesn’t work. Poor Gina’s going to have to brave it when she flies back to San Diego.”  
“Great,” she said in a mocking tone, opening the door behind Jerry.  
“The house is about four blocks from here,” I began once Lars, Gina, and Chris had piled into the back seat, “I’ll show it to you when we get closer. And Rob told me he and Dean left the door unlocked and Mrs. Hudson down the block told them she’ll keep an eye out on the house just in case.”  
“So we can just walk right in,” Jerry followed along, buckling his seat belt.  
“Exactly!”  
He fired up the engine and he was able to roll down the window whereas I stared at a single pane of glass to my right.  
I directed him to the old house on Hermosa Drive and instead of parking near the mailbox, he pulled up to the curb on the other side of the street. I was eager to climb out of that tiny oven and let Lars, Gina, and Chris out of that backseat as well. The five of us crossed the deserted street and made our way up to the front step nestled between two yucca plants.  
I opened the front door and we found ourselves in the dark, vacant living room. Jerry lunged for the lamp next to the arm of the couch and clicked it on, and golden yellow light bathed over the plush emerald green couch and the bookshelves on the side of the room, now barren and emptied of any of Mom and Dad’s books, left with nothing more than a few dust bunnies.  
“Okay, so where’s this infamous jacket?” asked Jerry, rubbing his hands together. Gina set her purse down on the couch and jogged down the hall to my bedroom; she soon emerged with the jacket tucked under arm and gestured for us to come into the kitchen. Chris took a seat on the couch and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.  
“Don’t you wanna join us?” I asked him.  
“I’d love to, but--God, I’m beat,” he admitted with a shrug. “It’s been a long day.”  
“True.” I leaned down to give him a light kiss on the cheek and then he bent down to untie his boots. I joined the three of them in the kitchen right as Gina lay her jacket over the top of the table. She had had this corduroy jacket for as long as I had known her when she and I met after high school: the front bore several patches, of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Bauhaus, The Cure, Ramones, Joy Division, and Blondie. She had pinned roses and tiny flowers and hearts in between the patches and all around the pockets of the jacket. This thing belonged to HER, and to see a quartet of brand new patches felt akin to a christening of sorts.  
Jerry reached into his jeans pocket for the Metallica, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Nine Inch Nails patches out of their hiding place. I noticed he still had the bracelet Sasha had given him, the one she had stolen from Lars. The image of the flames engulfing Ray and Eileen’s house singed into my memory: I was still in disbelief that we got out of there as fast as we did.  
“Okay, so I’ll take this back with me to Seattle,” he told her, “I know a seamstress up there. Her name is Xana and she made Jeff--Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, a few of his hats. She can probably organize these better than I can and--” He yawned.  
“--at a more convenient time, too. I say we all just find a place to crash in this here house and call it a night, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow.”  
The fatigue started to sink over me. I had thought about showering once we came back to the house, but I decided to do so in the morning.  
Lars pushed up the hem of his shirt as he pressed his hands to his hips. I could tell his skin was soft and plush, even from standing right behind him: a slight roll of fat rode atop the waist band of his jeans. An otherwise fit boy with a few extra pounds; the kind of boy I didn’t know I wanted or felt I needed to have holding in the palms of my hands. I knew I liked him, but seeing his flesh a third time, and seeing a part I hadn’t seen yet forced me into reconsideration.  
At one point, he turned to me with a befuddled look upon his full face.  
“I want to take a shower,” he requested to me in a low voice. I swallowed because I knew the one thing that separated me from feeling his skin was the bottom hem of his shirt.  
“There’s, er--” I cleared my throat as I gestured down the hallway to my left. “--towels and things in the closet here. Like fresh soap and... whatnot. And then you just--just--turn the dials and strip naked and get in.”  
Lars took one step closer to me, followed by another and another and another until his body was right up against me: a mere inch separated the two of us. The strong smell of tequila combined with Sun Chips and a spritz of his cologne about his neck tickled my nose. The tip of nose hung right next to my face, and for a second, I swore he was about to kiss me either right on the mouth or at least a little pat on the cheek. Those lips, so small and yet picture perfect, perfect for a sweet kiss.  
“Strip naked?” he echoed in a near whisper.  
“Yeah. Strip naked. Take all of your clothes off and get right in.”  
He dropped his gaze to my Stone Temple Pilots shirt and the neckline resting upon my chest: I need not look down to know he stared at my chest. I watched the very tip of his tongue slither out of his mouth so as to wet his lips. He peered up at me; those eyes penetrated right into my soul. He squinted his eyes and wet his lips again but he never said anything because Chris was right behind us. Instead he stepped away and strode down the hall to the linen closet: he stooped down before one of the shelves to show me the snug denim stretched over his ass. I pictured myself squeezing him as if squeezing a pair of ripe avocados.  
He straightened himself up and, with one more flash at me, he ambled across the hall to the bathroom and shut the door.  
I pictured him in there, stripping off his shirt followed by his jeans.  
No. No, Marie. No. Picture Ben instead. A much taller, far more slender version of Lars, but with that short shrub of nappy dark hair atop his head, taking off his shirt and then his jeans...  
I rubbed my face with both of my hands. I was too tired to think of anything other than sexy rock n’ roll boys, and it was too late for me to do anything else, and thus I decided to turn in for the night.  
I made my way back to my room, my old room, and opened the window across from the foot of my bed. I used the glow from the light in the living room to take off my shirt and my shorts, followed by my bra. I climbed into bed, underneath the blue blanket Mrs. Hudson had given me. I crawled into the bed I hadn’t slept on in what like so long, and lay my head down on the pillow, and fell asleep within mere minutes.


	8. The Next Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Mirror in the bathroom, please talk free.  
> The door is locked, just you and me.  
> Can I take you to a restaurant that's got glass tables?  
> You can watch yourself while you are eating.”  
> -”Mirror in the Bathroom”, The English Beat

I awoke next to Gina there in the back seat of Chris' car and the continuous roar of the pavement underneath the wheels. I groaned inside of my throat as I reached up to rub my eyes. The sun shone through the window behind us: all I could see in the bright light was the back side of Chris’ head and his long black tendrils, and Lars lounging in the front seat next to him with his chin pressed to his collar. He, too, had fallen asleep.  
I peered out the window at the desert, consisted of nothing but rolling hills dotted in low sagebrush shrubs, stretching as far as the eye could see all around us.  
I cleared my throat as I rubbed my eyes.  
“Where are we?” I asked aloud, my voice breaking.  
“Marie?” Chris called back to me.  
“Yeah--where are we?”  
“We’re about half an hour outside of Vegas,” he answered. “Remember Rob and Dean put their car over on Tropicana a few months ago so we would have a place to meet up at?” And why we didn’t choose Albuquerque was still beyond me.  
“Yeah?”  
“Well, it’s almost five o’clock and since the two of you have been asleep since we left San Francisco--and he fell asleep after we switched places in Bakersfield--when I stopped to get gas in Barstow, I called Jerry and he’s gonna buy us dinner.”  
“Okay...” I trusted Chris with this whole thing, especially since I just awoke in the middle of an air conditioned car en route to The City That Never Sleeps. We drove around a gentle curve, and past the exit for Zzyzx Road before the road straightened out for the final push. We passed a field of solar panels, followed by a small forest of Joshua trees.  
Once the highway melded into freeway, Gina awoke in the seat next to me. She rubbed her eyes and glanced about the car, and peered  
out the windows at the passing low buildings.  
“Are we in Vegas?” she wondered aloud, her voice breaking. She reached into her purse for her glasses.  
“Yes, we are,” replied Chris, “Jerry’s taking us out for dinner soon in Henderson.”  
“Dinner?” Lars blurted out, sniffing and rubbing his eyes. The three of us burst out laughing as we went around a gentle curve in the freeway: off in the distance stood the glassy black pyramid of the Luxor; the broad slab of stone that was Caesar’s Palace; the shadow of the Space Needle that was the Stratosphere; I recognized Planet Hollywood and the Bellagio, but given this was the first time I went to Las Vegas, I had to ride along the Strip to get a feel of everything.  
We took the next exit taking us over to Henderson and Chris drove us a few blocks before we reached a tiny diner with a slate gray roof. We took the first space near the front, and that was when I recognized Jerry standing there out front with a can of beer in one hand, sunglasses over his face, and his blond hair tied up in a ponytail.  
“There he is!” Gina declared as we climbed out of the car and into the torrid bread oven that was the Las Vegas Valley. Lucky for us, the sun started to hang low over the mountains.  
“Here I am now,” Jerry cracked as she trotted up to him for a kiss on his lips. Lars climbed out of the front seat and stretched: he squinted his eyes at the light of the afternoon sun and then greeted his teeth, perhaps for the unbearable heat. I met up with Chris there at the curb and he put his arm around me as we walked into the diner, which had a black and white checkerboard for a floor stretching all across the room; low metal bar stools with red cushions underneath a bar with a pearly white top, and white tables accompanied with similar red chairs dotted across the floor.  
“And suddenly I am really hungry,” Lars remarked, rubbing his belly as we made our way to a booth. Something incredibly cute about his doing that.  
“You guys hang tight for a minute, I have to use the ladies’ room,” I told them, setting down my purse and reaching into the side pocket for a pad: I could feel it coming, but I was happy it never came when we saw STP, or Pearl Jam, or Nine Inch Nails. I hurried to the nook in the wall between the front door and the edge of the bar to the bathrooms. I darted inside and took the first stall.  
Once I had finished, I washed my hands and then threw cold water over my face. I stepped out of the bathroom right as Jerry yanked me aside further into the corridor. He pressed me against the wall and breathed hard into my face as if about to kiss me. He opened his lips for the lean in when I clasped my hands onto his neck.  
“Jerry, what are you doing?” I demanded in a hushed voice, and he stopped himself.  
“Wait. What am I doing?” he asked himself before returning to me. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”  
“Well, yeah, of course. It’s just--what are you doing?”  
“I couldn’t help myself,” he confessed. “Ever since the STP show, I’ve just been--caught up with Gina and... I miss that amazing night between you and me.”  
“Well, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked him.  
“Gina,” he replied.  
“Oh, right. Right. And yes, I won’t tell her anything.”  
“Good, ‘cause she doesn’t need to know that her best friend slept cheated on her boyfriend with her boyfriend. Anyways, get back there before we both get in trouble.” He patted my shoulders before letting go of me, and I returned to Chris, Lars, and Gina to order drinks and then dinner. Much to my surprise, Lars was far more silent this evening than the few nights before where it was as if he had a large boat motor powering his mouth. He sat there on the cushion, nestled in between Chris and Jerry, drinking his milkshake and eating his tuna wrap, but every so often, he glanced up at me without lifting his head.  
It was as if he sent me signals because every time I kept my gaze fixed upon my food, I could feel him staring at me for prolonged amounts of time.  
I finally caught him in the act when we all finished up: Gina was telling me about her classes for this upcoming term at school and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him looking right at me.  
Once we finished dinner, we filed back outside to Chris’ car: the sun had sank behind the mountains but the heat was far from subsiding.  
“Okay, so you girls gotta get back to Albuquerque because your--” Jerry gestured at me with his sunglasses in hand. “--your parents’ house is unlocked. And you--” He gestured at Gina. “--have to get your jacket out of her closet.”  
“Rob and Dean were there, weren’t they?” she asked him.  
“Yes, they were,” I answered for him. “Earlier this year.”  
“Well, let’s see,” Chris started, checking his watch, “it’s almost seven o’clock--”  
A low black car bounded into the parking lot at that moment, cutting off his thought.  
“Speaking of Rob and Dean,” said Lars, bringing a hand to his mouth. They pulled up to the back of Chris’ car and the passenger side window rolled down, thus revealing Dean’s slender, squarish face and nappy dark hair piled over his head.  
“Thought you guys would never show up,” Jerry called out.  
“Oh, come on!” Rob scoffed from the driver’s seat. “Alright, so what’s the plan?”  
“We’ve gotta catch the red eye!” declared Gina.  
“You do? Oh, yeah, that’s right, you and Marie start school soon.”  
“Really hope Sasha doesn’t follow us out here,” stated Chris.  
“Pfff, well, of course,” I cracked.  
“After what she did to Ray and Eileen’s house, let’s hope she stays the fuck away from matches for a while,” said Dean.  
“Well, here, let’s—” Rob took off his sunglasses and breathed on the lenses before wiping them with the bottom hem of his shirt. “—you guys all have your cars back at the hotel. How ‘bout you guys keep your cars here and we'll meet you back there tomorrow.”  
“Tomorrow?” Jerry echoed.  
“No, wait, hang on,” Rob corrected himself. “Not tomorrow. The next day after that. Yeah, 'cause the girls need to be back in Cali soon for school.”  
“What are you guys gonna do?” asked Chris.  
“We’re going back to the hotel to make sure Sasha doesn’t torch the place,” Rob explained. “You going out to Albuquerque, right?”  
“Yeah,” I replied. “For a bit.”  
“Yeah, get as far away from her as you can because--you know, she’s batshit.”  
“Oh, and Lars?” Dean called after the car moved forward an inch. Lars lifted his head and raised his eyebrows at him; Dean reached into the glove compartment for something and revealed a small bag of Sun Chips. Lars’ face lit up and he took the bag of chips out of his hand.  
“See you guys soon,” Jerry called after them, and then Dean rolled up the window as they pulled away. He rubbed his hands together as he stepped off of the curb. “Alright, to the airport...”

*****************

We were unable to board the plane and leave the Las Vegas Airport until nine thirty, and all the while I watched Lars eat his chips at a slow pace. I sat in between him and Jerry near the terminal for the next flight out to Albuquerque, and once again, every so often, I caught him glancing back at me. I thought of striking up a conversation with him, but there was nothing I could think of right at the moment and I could focus on all but my parents’ house back in Albuquerque.  
Meanwhile, Jerry shifted his weight in the uncomfortable hard seat and organized the four patches he had to give to Gina for her jacket on the arm of the chair out of my line of sight.  
I still remained in disbelief about what had happened with that edition of Painted in a Corner and what happened with that copy of The Rocket. What stumped me even more was the fact Gina still knew nothing about it, although The Rocket came to her house on a weekly basis. She also had plenty to do with all of this as much as me, too. Maybe Jerry kept his promise and he hid it for me somewhere where no one could ever find it.  
But as I thought about it, I recalled sleeping with Lars in the living room and seeing that edition of The Rocket in the stack next to the fireplace. I had no idea if that was the Ribauxs’ copy in question and it was too dark in that room to see the lettering in their fullest form other than maybe an “R” and an “I”, but I had too many questions at that point. But on the other hand, if I looked at Harold’s copy of The Rocket there was I rubbed Lars’ belly and ground upon his hips, the joke was on Sasha now.


	9. The Bracelet

I awoke to the feel of something soft and warm snuggled right next to me, and it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a teddy bear. I rolled over onto my back to see Lars laying on his back with the blanket pulled up to his ears. I had no idea he had crawled into the blow up mattress next to me, but then again he and I had slept together at Ray and Eileen’s house, and I remembered his silent movements, how he slid under the covers of their blow up mattress without a sound. The way in which the blanket surrounded the full shape of his face made him resemble a little doll.  
I stared on at his closed eyes and the placid expression on his face: stray strands of hair started to fall over his cheek and his little cherry lips. I was almost inclined to pushing his hair out of his face and then kissing him good morning, right on his soft skin. But I lay there next to him and watched him sleep.  
I glanced up at the coffee table at the red and black weave bracelet Jerry had given Gina last night at the Nine Inch Nails show, and why she put it there above Lars’ head was beyond me.  
A part of me wished Dave hadn’t thrown out his couch already given I felt this mattress losing air. Lars snuggled down so deep into his pillow and the edge of the mattress that I believed he was freezing to death: his hair slid down from the side of his head and onto his face. He groaned inside of his throat but never awoke.  
I rolled over onto my side so I was face to face with him. Indeed, the mattress had lost a bit of air overnight because I slid right up against his body: my face hung about an inch from his face. His eyes popped open and his pupils contracted at the sight of me. He swallowed but never said anything as he stared right at me.  
“Good morning,” was all I could say to him.  
“God morgen,” he whispered, and then he cleared his throat. “I mean, good morning. May I ask why--you are--very, very close to me right now?”  
“We’re losing air,” I whispered as he licked his lips. “I don’t think this mattress is meant for two people, much less--a heavy chick such as myself.”  
He ran the tip of his tongue along the front of his teeth and followed it up with another clearing of his throat but he never took his eyes off of me. He squirmed inside of the blanket a bit.  
“Do you need help?” I asked him as he grunted inside of his throat.  
“Oh--all I can get.” He reached up out of the blanket to move the hair out from his face.  
“Well, let’s see... I’ll try to roll out of bed this way... I can’t. Shit.”  
“I cannot move, either. Well, at least we are not laying in a water bed.”  
“True. I think the best thing I can do is--take off the sleeping bag this way--” I peeled off the top of the sleeping bag and shifted my weight over to the other side of the mattress. He continued to lay there, bundled up like a little Danish burrito, while I struggled to roll off the mattress.  
“Or a hammock, for that matter,” he added.  
“Oh, God, talk about a struggle,” I muttered: I rolled off of the mattress and onto the carpet.  
“Are you alright?” he asked me, clearing his throat again.  
“Yeah--” I rolled onto my chest and lifted myself up as if I was doing a push up. I stood on my knees to better look at him sinking down into the deflating mattress.  
“Help me,” he begged.  
“Try doing what I did and roll,” I suggested to him. He jerked his shoulder as if about to roll onto his back. He tried it again and this time he lay part of the way onto his back: that side of the mattress deflated some more. He huffed, blowing a strand of hair off of his face.  
“Come on, I’m round enough--this should be easy!” he declared. He tried rolling to the side again and I watched the blanket unravel from around his body. This time he rolled onto the spot of the carpet where the couch used to be, right on his stomach before he picked himself up. I saw he never took off his pants but I gazed on at his bare body, at his shoulders and his collar bones, at his chest and his nipples; and then when he pulled himself off of the floor, I gazed on at his thick waist and the band of his jeans clinging to his hips.  
He raised his eyebrows at me as a piece of his long hair drifted over his shoulder.  
“You like what you see here?” he asked me with a little smirk. I never got to answer him because Gina strode into the room right then, wrapped in nothing but her bathrobe.  
“Oh, there’s my bracelet!” she declared: I stood to my feet and snatched the bracelet off of the table to give to her. She strapped it on over her wrist, and then I turned to Lars, who nodded down at the deflating mattress. I assisted him in ridding the rest of the air inside as Gina disappeared back into the other room: I rolled one part of the mattress while he stomped around upon the surface and exerted all of his weight on certain spots.  
The smell of coffee floated into the room as the two of us pushed one end of the mattress to the other as if we were rolling a marijuana paper. When we reached the end, a soft grumble emerged from the inside of his stomach.  
“Somebody’s hungry,” I noted as he pressed a hand to his belly. He let out a low whistle.  
“That is an understatement,” he said under his breath; and with that, he dashed out of the room and into the kitchen. I chuckled at him as I stooped down for the rolled up mattress to set it aside. The sound of someone descending the stairs caught my attention: I whirled around to see Chris stepping into the living room with his long dark curls tied back behind his head and dressed in his dark blue flannel over his white T-shirt, soft looking black trousers, and large shiny black boots.  
“Oh, there you are,” he greeted me.  
“Here I am now,” I replied to him and he flashed me a quaint smile.  
“Marie, I want to ask you a question,” he began as we started out of the room to head into the kitchen.  
“Yes?”  
We stopped in the doorway: out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Lars already seated at the kitchen table across from Gina and Jerry with a plate of food before him. But Chris bowed his head towards my face. He licked his lips to bring attention to his mustache, and then he shifted his weight.  
“Will--er--Will you do the honor--” he started in a near whisper.  
“Yes?”  
“Will you do the honor of becoming my girlfriend?”  
I fluttered my eyelashes at him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the three of them staring at us. I turned my head to look at Gina and Jerry gazing on at us in stunned silence: Lars meanwhile stared at me with his eyes wide and glassy, and his mouth full of sourdough toast. I liked Lars and I slept with him, and he promised to take me back here with him to the Bay Area if my financial aid fell through for this upcoming term at school, but at the same time, I liked Chris. I liked Chris so much that I almost couldn’t take it.  
“Don’t mind them, don’t mind them,” Chris beckoned me, waving off the three of them. “Just--will you be my girlfriend?”  
I swallowed as I knew if I said “yes” I would be closing the door on Lars after all of his sweetness. But if I said “no”, I would break Chris’ heart. But then again, I had no idea if my financial aid would come through, and I didn’t feel like moving again, either. I swallowed again and nodded my head.  
“Yes. Yes, I will be your girlfriend.”  
Gina let out a soft “aw”; Jerry snickered at that. I looked over at the three of them, and the sight of her clasping onto his upper arm and leaning the side of her head on his shoulder. He flashed me a big smile; meanwhile, the disappointment was obvious on Lars’ face as he turned away with a sigh through his nose. I stood on my tiptoes for a kiss on Chris’ lips: the edges of his mustache brushed against my lips. We then embraced one another before heading into the kitchen for breakfast for ourselves.  
“By the way, has anyone seen my shirt?” Lars asked us once Chris grabbed a plate for me and then for himself. “My crisps, too?”  
“Your what?” Gina questioned.  
“Crisps. Chips, I mean. The little bag of Sun Chips I got last night at Nine Inch Nails and I never opened them.”  
“No idea, man,” Jerry confessed. I picked up a couple of slices of sourdough toast followed by three links of sausage. Something outside of the kitchen window caught my eye, and I peered up at the sight of Dave striding up to the side door. He jiggled the doorknob, and Chris rounded me to unlock the door to let him inside. He ran a hand through his bright red curls and let out a short whistle.  
“What’s up?” I asked him as he shut the door behind him.  
“Sasha’s on her way here,” he stated in a flat tone of voice.  
“What!” Jerry exclaimed as Dave took a seat next to Lars at the table.  
“Yeah. I saw her on the way over here from the thrift place near the Golden Gate Bridge. For a second, I thought she was going to follow me because I accidentally made eye contact with her. The good news is--those two brothers, uh, what are their names again?”  
“Rob and Dean,” I told him.  
“Rob and Dean, that was it! They called my house and said they got a room for us at that hotel in Las Vegas--Nevada--in case shit gets real over in Albuquerque.”  
“Why Vegas?” asked Gina.  
“Mine and Chris’ cars are there,” answered Lars as he prepared to wolf down another slice of more toast. “It is a long story.”  
“And if she torches my house, we can stay with Mrs. Hudson for a bit until I can call my dad,” I followed along. “It’s the perfect plan!”  
“By the way, where’s your shirt?” asked Dave, chuckling.  
“I juff affed that!” Lars declared with his mouth full.

***************************

Over breakfast, Sasha never showed to the house which gave us time to pick up our things--and Lars to put on another shirt--and pile into Dave’s truck to head over to the airport. I opened the back door for Lars and Jerry to climb inside: Gina would sit in the passenger seat next to Dave. Meanwhile, Chris’ car was still parked down the block.  
“Do you have the patches?” I overheard Gina ask Jerry as I slung my purse over my shoulder.  
“In my pocket,” he told her. Dave’s house keys jingled as he locked the front door, but they were soon drowned out by the screech of tires on the pavement before us.  
“Alright, so I’ll meet you guys at the airport and--who the fuck?” Chris blurted out from behind me. I leapt back when I recognized Sasha’s face, twisted and dark with rage. She blocked the mouth of Dave’s driveway and climbed out of the car, pointing at Gina all the while.  
“YOU!” she shouted, her voice echoing off of the front of the house and the surface of the lawn. “YOU!”  
I watched her eyes spot the bracelet on Gina’s wrist.  
“Is that my bracelet?” she demanded, her voice breaking.  
“No, it’s mine!” Gina defended, clutching her wrist as if she injured it.  
“Gimme that fucking bracelet!”  
“No!” She ran around the tailgate of the truck, but Sasha was quick on her heels and caught her near the corner of the tailgate. Gina doubled back and Sasha rounded the other side when Lars opened the door. She slammed into the inside of the door; disoriented, she clutched onto Lars’ thigh and arm to catch her balance.  
“Give me the bracelet!” she shrieked into Gina’s face.  
“Fuck you!”  
“Give. Me. The. Bracelet.”  
“No,” Gina snapped.  
“Give me the bracelet or I will torch this place and every other building I see any of you in.”  
“Let go of me!” Lars screeched.  
“You and whose army?” Chris jeered from the other side of the truck.  
“Don’t--” I stopped him.  
“Hey, get off of him!” Dave bellowed: I watched him hurtle from across the yard to Sasha. He grabbed her around the waist and yanked her off of Lars. She kicked her legs, smacking the top edge of the door over his head.  
“Don’t fuck with my band mates, you fucking pyro,” Dave snarled as he threw her to the ground and pinned her down. “You understand me? YOU UNDERSTAND ME? YOU FUCK WITH MY BAND MATES, YOU FUCK WITH ME!”  
Gina rounded the hood of the truck to throw her arms around me. Jerry hurried up to us with his sunglasses already over his face and his mouth agape with horror.  
“What the fuck, Jerry?” Gina demanded, showing him the bracelet. “You didn’t tell me this was hers!”  
“I guess I thought she was out of the picture already,” he confessed with a shrug.  
“Get out of here or I’m calling the cops,” I heard Dave yell at her. “You hear me? You’re trespassing, blocking my driveway, and you almost kicked my friend in the head. Now, get out. Get out, you petty cunt...”  
Sasha flipped us the bird as she ran back to her car with tears streaming down her face.  
“Yeah, stick those into a meat grinder for us, baby,” Jerry called after her.  
“I’m going to burn something that’s yours!” she shouted as she climbed back into her car, fired it up, and sped away, the tires screeching all the while.  
“Fuck,” Dave breathed out, running a hand through his red hair.  
“Dave, come here and look at this!” cried Lars.  
“Holy shit!”  
The four of us rounded the tailgate to look at what Lars pointed out. Right there on the top edge of the door was a large dent: the metal crumpled into the side of the roof from the impact of Sasha’s shoe.  
“Jesus, that was some kick!” Jerry exclaimed, taking off his sunglasses for a better examination.  
“I’ll say,” Lars noted, the expression on his face growing grim, “that could have been the side of my head. I already got kicked in the head once, too.”  
The six of us fell into a brief silence before Chris spoke again.  
“Alright, change of plans. Let’s get in my car and get our asses over to Vegas.”  
“That’s a long fucking drive, man!” Dave exclaimed. “Besides, I already bought each of you guys a ticket. I’d have to make a call for a refund.”  
“I’ll fly down there,” Jerry offered. “Besides, I think the DeLeos are down there. I can meet up with them and tell them what’s happening.”  
“But what about us?” asked Gina.  
“We’ll split it,” Chris continued. He then turned to Lars. “You up for driving?”  
“Driving until I can’t?” He raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes. “To be honest, that is not what I was expecting. But I will do it.” He sighed as he gazed on at me. I knew he wanted me, but it was either him here in the Bay Area or with Chris, and I had school to ten to. “Just as long as it gets us away from her.”  
“What are you going to do?” I asked Dave.  
“Me? Well, I guess I’ll go back to San Diego for the time being. Might as well--Ray and Eileen’s other house burned down and I’ve got to make sure Sasha didn’t torch my place. And I threw out my couch, too.”


	10. The T-Shirt

During the party, Dave had invited us to stay at his second house the day of the Nine Inch Nails show. It was good for me because I would make the hasty flight back to Albuquerque as my parents’ house was unlocked, and had been unlocked for months given Dean never had the keys. It was quite the experience, sleeping on the inflatable mattress with nothing more than a blanket and a sleeping bag: he planned to rid of his old couch given he would be selling the house soon.  
“I’m not letting you go out there by yourself,” Jerry told me the next morning over coffee and breakfast.  
“I’m from Albuquerque, you know,” I pointed out to him.  
“Well, yeah, of course. It’s—”  
“Sasha?”  
“Yeah, pretty much. I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.”  
Chris cleared his throat once he took a drink of coffee.  
“So when are planning on leaving again?” he asked Lars, who sat right next to me and kept one hand down on the edge of the seat of the chair, out of Gina and Jerry’s sight.  
“At three,” he replied, “the show doesn’t start until eight, but we have to drive over the bridge--all of the way over to the very heart of San Francisco, and Dave and I are both terrified of traffic.” He nibbled on his bottom lip as he flashed a glimpse over at me. I locked eyes with him for what felt like a split second, those striking green eyes that I had fallen in love with over the past several months.  
He wanted me: I could feel the heat between us right there as I watched his fingers curl back into the top of his palm right over the edge of the seat. The memory of us sleeping together in the living room hung fresh in my mind: I could still feel his warmth and his softness against my skin. He wanted to touch me again, and I wanted the same for him. But Chris wanted me as well: I watched him beam on at me from out of the corner of my eye.  
After breakfast, I took a shower in that small porcelain bathtub upstairs. I left my shampoo and my conditioner down in San Diego, but Chris was kind enough to let me borrow his bottles.  
As I stood there under the stream of warm water, scrubbing my hair and with the curtain drawn next to me, I had this odd feeling that someone watched me. I peered out the bubbly window next to me, opened just enough to let in the cool fresh air from outside, but no other windows from the other houses from my point of view. But the feeling persisted all the way through my shower: I knew there was a keyhole under the doorknob. I picked out my Stone Temple Pilots shirt and my black jeans: I knew Chris and Lars liked that T-shirt because that soft fabric accentuated my body like a glove.  
After a late lunch, like clockwork we all piled into Dave’s truck and drove out of that cute little neighborhood in Berkeley, and over the Bay Bridge to the very heart and soul of San Francisco to see Nine Inch Nails, that little industrial band Rob and Dean both swore would make it huge some day. Jerry and Chris volunteered to ride in the bed under the camper shell; Lars rode in the front seat next to Dave while Gina and I took the back seat.  
While we crossed the bridge, I rolled down the window to take in the coolness of the waters down below and the gray striated clouds stretched overhead. The whole mood of the place reminded me of San Diego, and I had hope Lars and his band could find his way down there with myself, Gina, and Stone Temple Pilots. Or perhaps we all could move up to Seattle together like what Jerry suggested. One way or the other, I wanted us all to live together in our own commune of the world like the bunch of artists I had dreamed of before The Rocket published Painted in a Corner. I knew there was no way we all could live out in Albuquerque, out in the desert with nothing more than the Rio Grande and the southern end of the Rocky Mountains to give us a sense of clarity.  
We arrived at the venue within range of the university at almost five thirty in the afternoon, the little outdoor amphitheater surrounded by large cottonwood trees; and that point, the rain started to fall upon us.  
“I’m glad I’ve got the camper shell,” Dave remarked as he flicked on the windshield wipers. The rain picked up in pace and he turned the wipers up to the top most setting. And yet, the rain washed over the windows of the truck as if we were in a car wash.  
“Jesus,” he muttered as the rain pounded the roof in a deafening roar.  
“Yeah,” Lars agreed, raising his voice a bit. “God damn. I don’t think I have ever seen rain like this here.”  
“Yeah, me, neither--”  
We bounded into the gravel parking lot right as puddles started forming all around us. Lucky for us, a few cars clustered here and there over the gravel and so we could park within range of the front doors.  
The sliding window between mine and Gina’s heads opened and Chris poked his head into the cab of the truck.  
“So what time do the doors open?” he asked Dave; he checked the clock on the dashboard before taking the keys out of the ignition.  
“Six,” he replied.  
“And what time is it now?” asked Jerry from inside of the bed.  
“Five thirty. We can just hang out for a bit.”  
Lars turned around in his seat.  
“Do you guys have anything to eat back there?” he asked Chris.  
“We don’t, no.”  
“God damn it.” He turned back around in his seat and stared out the windshield.  
“Besides, you just had lunch,” Gina pointed out.  
“I know, it is just--”  
“He’s always hungry,” I told her.  
“Thank you, yes. I am never satisfied.”  
“Well, when you’re from a little archipelago in Northern Europe,” started Dave, putting his forearm over the top of the steering wheel, “and a place that isn’t really known for having a lot of food--”  
“Aside from pastries,” Jerry called from the back.  
“Our pastries, porridge, weird breads, sour cream, and--and--and cold open faced sandwiches,” Lars finished.  
“It’s also a place that gets hella cold in the winter time,” Dave added.  
“Quite dark, too,” he muttered accompanied with a sigh. The rain soon died down to a continuous drone over our heads, before it finally dropped off into a gentle sprinkle.  
“Just like in Seattle,” I heard Jerry say aloud.  
“Shall we get out?” Gina suggested.  
“I don’t see why not,” replied Dave with a shrug. He opened his door first and the sprinkles of rain water washed over his red hair. Lars followed suit, and then Gina, and then myself.  
Lars and I both gazed up at the rain clouds as they hung low over us before splitting apart out over the ocean. The rays of the late afternoon sun shone over us as the final drops of rain fizzled out with the incoming sea breeze and the smell of salt and wet earth. I looked over at Lars and the shadows over his eyes and around the right side of his face. He actually looked like the term dark knight fitted him.  
“The sky has opened for us,” he declared, showing me that sweet little smile.  
“The sun is shining on us,” I added. Chris and Jerry climbed out of the bed and met up with us there on the right side of the truck.  
“Hey, guys, the tickets for the rail are at will call,” Dave called out to us, “we better get our asses up there--”  
And with nothing more, the two of us shut the doors in unison and we all crossed the drenched gravel to the front of the venue, behind a series of low wrought iron gates. Lars opened the gate for me and Gina.  
“Why, thank you,” I told him in a low voice, “but you shouldn’t’ve done that.”  
“Now, now, I should be a gentleman,” he replied with a wag of his finger.  
We picked up our tickets there at will call, and then Jerry offered to buy Gina a patch for her jacket, or the other reason why I wanted to fly out to Albuquerque before school started. Chris bought Lars a drink and me a bottle of water, and then Dave led us all to our spots down in the general admission section, a few rows from the stage. The six of us would be riding the rail at Nine Inch Nails, whom of which stood on the brink of stardom by Dean and Rob’s words.  
When the sun sank behind the horizon behind us, and in turn painting the sky overhead that deep lush violet, Trent Reznor and his band stepped onto the stage, all of them docked in black leather from head to toe. He had long straight jet black hair down past his shoulders and enormous dark eyes against a pallid white face. He sang with a distinctive, powerful voice, one riddled with anger, agony, and lust all at the same time. He had a drummer, two keyboardists, and a guy who played guitar and bass. I nestled down in between Lars and Jerry, the latter of whom at one point put his arm around me.  
Something caught my eye at one point. I turned my head to see the woman at the other end of the rail. She was a short blonde woman with combat boots and a look of blood in her eyes. I felt Jerry tighten his grip on my shoulder.  
“That shirt,” she mouthed at me. I shrugged because I had no idea about her or what she meant by that. Lars took a glimpse at me, baffled.  
“Where did you get that shirt?” she demanded, her voice lost underneath the curtain of noise surrounding us. I shook my head in response to her. I couldn’t tell her from the simple fact that it was too loud there in the general admission section. Irked, she rolled her eyes and stepped away from there, which left us to relish in the big, futuristic laden rock n’ roll of Nine Inch Nails.  
I soon understood what Dean and Rob meant as they debuted a brand new song called “Closer”, the chorus of which consisted of “I want to fuck you like an animal”, followed by “I want to feel you from the inside.” I looked over at Lars and the twinkle in his eye and the warm blush upon his face.  
I knew what he was thinking at that moment.  
They played for an hour, but I swore it lasted a mere handful of minutes. Dave stuck out his hand to shake Trent’s, and the latter crouched down to shake all of our hands: his grip was firm and strong, a bold human being with no fear to be seen.  
We soon returned to the truck, with our ears ringing, our minds blown, and our bodies exorcised of demons; and Dave drove us out of the lot and back to the house in Berkeley before the traffic worsened around us.  
I could not get the song out of my head as I flopped down on that old, shabby gray couch and leaned back against the cushion.  
“Don’t get too comfy, Jerry and I will be moving that thing out of here as soon as the rain stops,” Dave told me. He disappeared into the kitchen to speak with Chris and Jerry about something. I remembered the air mattress in the linen closet when Lars entered the room from the front foyer. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. I lifted my head to take a better look at him.  
“Can I--talk to you about something?” he asked me, his eyebrows knitting together for a stern expression.  
“Yes,” I answered, lifting myself upright and adjusting the hem of my shirt.  
“I should tell you,” he began in a near whisper, eyeing my waist.  
“Yes?” I sweetly asked him. He swallowed as he shifted his weight there in his seat next to me.  
“I...” He sighed. “I--I peeped on you while you were in the shower earlier.”  
“What do you mean, you peeped on me?”  
“You know that keyhole that is in the door?”  
I nodded my head. And then I knew what he meant by that.  
“And you know, I feel bad about it, too,” he continued.  
“Why?”  
“Because--you were standing in the shower and I walked by, and I--just--looked in.”  
“And?”  
“And what?”  
I peered behind him to make sure we were the only ones in the room, and then I returned to him.  
“Lars, you’ve seen me,” I said in a near whisper.  
“I know, it is just--you are nineteen and I am twenty-seven. I will be twenty-eight in December. I feel--I feel like--I should be with someone closer to my age, and you should be with someone closer to your age.”  
I shrugged at that. “So? I like Chris, and he’s your age. Jerry’s a little bit younger than the two of you. And Ben’s a few years older than me, except he’s married, though.”  
He blinked several times at me. “Wow, you are more open-minded than I had originally believed. Erm--er--”  
I pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. I brought my face closer to his, and then, dropping my finger, I pressed my lips to his with my eyes closed. How sweet it felt to reunite with those soft cherry lips again. I pulled my head back to look at him right in the eye; he looked at me with a befuddled expression upon his face.  
“Oh,” he blurted out, his pupils dilating. “Oh, I see.”  
“Come here, baby boy,” I whispered to him as his chest started heaving.  
“Only if you come to me first, baby girl,” he retorted. But before I could lunge forward, Jerry stepped into the room with something in his hand. Lars jerked back, ran a hand through the hair on top of his head, and leaned back and crossed his legs; I tossed my hair back from my face. Jerry glanced at the both of us with his eyebrows knitted together.  
“What’s going on in here?”  
“Nothing,” Lars and I said at the same time, even though I felt my face growing warm.  
“Oookay. Anyways, you guys are going to have to get off of that couch soon. Dave and I are going to be moving it out of here in like--two minutes. Do you guys know where you’re going to sleep?”  
“Air mattress,” I said with haste.  
“Damn it,” said Lars.  
“We can find a drawer for you,” Jerry cracked.  
“Ha ha,” Lars sneered with a slight roll of the eyes, and Jerry chuckled.  
“What you got in your hand there?” I asked him.  
“Plane ticket to Albah-cuckoo.”  
“There’s several of them--oh, right, right, you guys are coming out with me.”  
Lars and I climbed to our feet and stepped out of the way of Jerry and Dave while they moved out the couch. I had no idea where Dave had planned to take the couch given all he had said was taking it out to the curb for the moment.  
Meanwhile, Chris helped me blow up the air mattress once again, and I fetched the blanket and then the sleeping bag, and the pillow I had slept with the night before. Lars offered me another madeleine before I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth; I took it with me into the room so he wouldn’t have to watch me eat it. How I wanted to touch him again, and we were so close to making out there on the couch as I wolfed down the pastry and picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste.  
I returned to the living room in my pajamas right as I overheard Gina and Jerry talking about something in the kitchen. They spoke in whispers, but all I heard at one point was “--Marie and Lars--” The sound of our names made my heart skip a beat. I didn’t want to tell off Chris but I wanted Lars. I wanted the both of them, and I wanted us all together. I hoped Chris would understand if I turned him down as I turned off the lamp and crawled under the sleeping back. I heard our names again, this time with more emphasis.  
“Ugh, whatever,” I grumbled, rolling over onto my side there on the inflatable mattress.


	11. The Rendezvous

Chris ran his hand up my thigh to the button on my jeans. I jerked back and I wanted to tell him off because I had my heart set on Lars at the moment, but I felt the passion burning between the two of us. Besides, there was room big enough for the two of us. I gazed into his face and those eyes, shrouded by shadow three inches from me. His tongue slithered out of his lips, and then they pouted for mine as he came closer and closer. I felt my body relax at the touch of his hand on my waist.  
He lifted up the bottom hem of my shirt so as to feel me up, and run his hands all the way up my back. I closed my eyes as he unhooked my bra. I could feel the shakiness within his breath as he brought his lips closer and closer to me. The ends of his mustache brushed against my lips. The skin on his lips felt smooth and soft like butter cream, while the tips of his fingers crawled up my back like a curious crab.  
I pressed my chest against the front of his shirt, and that was when I felt the straps on my bra loosen and slack around my shoulders. The swaying of the train accentuated the feeling even more as he leaned back against the wall opposite from me.  
I had lost the thought of Lars at the moment in which Chris peeled off my shirt and watched my bra slide down my arms onto the seat next to us. Who was this Lars fellow the world spoke of? I had no idea about him as I held onto the hem of Chris’ shirt to take it off for him. I only remember dressing up for him one night and that was it.  
His fingers slithered onto the back of my head and then he entwined the locks of my hair around his fingers. I kissed him, over and over again, feeling the bristly hairs of his mustache grate against my lips. It almost felt as though I was swimming from the sway of the train and the feeling of Chris’ chest and stomach pressed against my body.  
Something firm rubbed against my thigh. I looked down, in the dim light, at the sight of the crotch of his jeans extended out from his hips. My heart skipped several beats.  
“So, how do you wanna do this?” he asked me in a low voice as I heard the rustling of denim fall down around his ankles.  
“You can take a seat and I’ll dance for you,” I told him.  
“Deal.”  
He ducked down into the black leather seat and I dropped my jeans to the floor. I let out a long low whistle as I lowered my butt onto his bare thighs. I slid around over his skin: I could hear him breathing heavy.  
I turned around to face him in the dim morning light. I squat down, straddling over his thighs, right before his firm length and reached in between his legs. I rubbed my breasts against his chest as I stroked him with both of my thumbs. It was tricky given this was only the third time I had ever had sex with someone, but his breath shook even more as I rubbed harder and harder against his chest, his thighs, and the shaft of his dick.  
“I think,” he whispered to me, “I think--I think--I think?”  
“You’re gonna come, aren’t you?” I teased him, grinding my whole body against his torso.  
“I just--I just--might--”  
I stood up right then, brushing my pointed nipples against his chest and holding the bone in between my breasts right in his face. He breathed on my skin, a pained, quivering breath. I let go of his shaft at the feeling of something sticky on the side of my hand.  
“Shit,” I muttered.  
“Did I come onto you?” he asked me, out of breath.  
“You did--”  
“Hang tight. Besides, I think our stop’s coming up. The lady did say we’d get here after sunrise after all--”  
I climbed off of him but not without stumbling back towards the wall. He climbed to his feet: in the dim light, I could see him steadying himself, pressing his hand to the wall opposite from me. I watched him put his clothes back on and then step out of the compartment with a slide of the door behind him. I stood there with my back to the wall and a bit of jizz on the side of my hand for a moment until the door slid open again and Chris stepped back inside with a wad of tissues in hand.  
He wiped the tissues upon the pads of my hand.  
“I see it,” he told me in a low voice. He wiped off the skin before wadding the tissues up and clutching it in one hand. I watched him stoop down for my bra, my shirt, and my jeans. No sooner had I slipped my shirt back on when the train slowed down. That was our cue to return to our seats.  
I tugged my jeans back on over my Chucks and my bare legs, and then the two of us made our way through the car and back to our seats, across the aisle from Gina and Jerry, and behind Lars.  
Soon we arrived at the train station there in San Francisco, where Chris and Jerry take the former’s car and Dave drove Lars, Gina, and me, and all of us would have our party the day before seeing Nine Inch Nails. Before Gina climbed inside of the back seat of the truck, she turned to me with a stunned look upon her face.  
“What the hell happened to you?” she demanded, and then she stopped.  
“It’s been a long train ride,” I confessed to her. A grin crossed her face before she climbed into Dave’s truck. Right before he started up the truck, I caught a low grumble from the front seat and it took me a moment to realize that was Lars’ stomach. I hoped Dave had plenty to eat at his second house over there in Oakland as we got on the freeway.  
Autumn was already beginning to fall on San Francisco as all of the oak trees had transformed into a flaming sea of orange and red, much like Dave’s hair. The clouds in the sky overhead hung low over us, beckoning torrential rain. I had no idea if he would let us stay overnight the next night given Jerry could not find a hotel for us, and it was after Labor Day weekend.  
The house was a cute little two story on the corner, nestled in between two identical looking houses with creamy white stucco outside walls and slate gray roofs, and with a small stretch of green grass before the front door and the two front windows. The inside reminded me of Ray and Eileen’s house in that walking through the front door we were met with the kitchen, the small dining room, and the side door out to the side of the house on the left, but on the right stood the living room and the stairs to the second floor, and the bathroom, the guest room, and Dave’s bedroom. The exception was right in front of us stood a short corridor leading to the back porch, whereas Ray and Eileen’s house had a closet.  
It was a party exactly how Jerry had described it: Dave put on Led Zeppelin and the six of us had pizza, ice cream, and he had made us a big bowl of fresh salad which reminded me of both San Diego and Albuquerque with its vinegar dressing, blackened corn, walnuts, and feta cheese mixed in with the lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes.  
At one point, Dave beckoned Lars, Gina, and me to the dining room table while Jerry and Chris talked about something. “Anyways, gather ‘round, kids... I’ve got something to tell ya...”


	12. The Contest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The mountain is high, the valley is low,  
> and you’re confused ‘bout which way to go.  
> So I’ve come here to give you a hand,  
> and lead you into the promise land.”  
> -”Free Ride”, Edgar Winter

Since there was no way we could make the train from Ray and Eileen’s house, Zelda drove us to the train station from her house right then and there in the middle of the night. Gina and I climbed into the back seat of the van, while Lars and Jerry took the way back, and Chris joined her in the front seat. I was in disbelief at the sight of that matchbook outside of the front step as we rolled forward down the street towards the first stoplight. I feared the worst happening. “That’s a clue, I’m telling you guys,” Jerry insisted.  
“We don’t doubt you, Jer,” Chris stated.  
“We really don’t,” Zelda joined in, peering into the rear view mirror.  
“God, I can’t believe that was Sasha,” he muttered behind my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him place his elbow on the top of the door in front of the window so as to rest the side of his head in the palm of his hand. I began to wonder about this woman, this woman who continued to torment Jerry even now after he had long broken off the relationship between the two of them. Was she really that vengeful, to take that formal publication of Painted in a Corner on such a personal level that she was indeed willing to burn Ray and Eileen’s house down?  
“I thought you ended it with her,” Lars pointed out in a low voice.  
“I did,” answered Jerry, “but I guess in her mind, we’re still together. Ugh--fuck. Really hope she doesn’t stalk us. I’ll run around all about the entire Southwest if I have to get her off my ass. She told me to drop dead after we broke up.”  
“Phew, harsh,” Gina remarked, taking her ticket out of her purse.  
Zelda drove us to the outskirts of Chula Vista to the Santa Fe train station, and although we were headed up there before the summer was over, it would be a long ride all the way up the coast line to the Bay Area. The bright side was staying with Dave would give us a place to stay when we went to go see Nine Inch Nails in a few days, that is if he allowed it.  
We lugged our belongings out of the back of the van and we filed into the train station with our tickets in hand. We all would be sitting in the one before the parlor car, given Lars’ appetite even at almost one o’clock in the morning, and the fact it was going to be a long train ride. Zelda bode us farewell before we climbed aboard.  
“Are you going to be alright?” I asked her as we embraced one another.  
“Of course,” she replied, “I’ll be taking care of my parents now. So--go see Dave. He’s willing to let you guys sleep on his musty old couch, even though he’s going to throw it out soon.”  
“Why’s that?” asked Gina.  
“He wants to move back to San Diego. Berkeley and San Fran are both getting expensive. Wouldn’t you agree, Lars?”  
“Oh, definitely,” Lars chimed in from behind us; I watched him tuck his wallet into his pocket, which in turn brought attention to his hips and the crotch of his jeans. I licked my lips at the sight of the band of his jeans hugging his waist. He was a hungry boy, hungry for something to eat and something to eat out again. In the faint light from the inside of the car, I watched him stroke the incoming fuzz upon his chin, and I wanted him to tickle and rub against me again. Those eyes, staring deep into my soul; how I wanted to sink inside of them again.  
But then before me stood Chris, and there was the possibility of Ben entering the picture soon enough as well. Even though the latter was married, I referred to myself as Medusa after all. Perhaps I could seduce him if and when the opportunity arose.  
Zelda gave Gina a hug and then she let us board the train. The soft royal blue seats before the windows looking out to the ocean beckoned us to have a spot and recline back for the ride. I took a seat next to the window while Chris sat down next to me.  
Lars unbuttoned his jeans as he reclined back in his chair: he didn’t take off his shoes this time given he was on a public vehicle as opposed to a bus.  
A few more people stepped on board and, once the conductor checked our tickets, Chris and I leaned back in our seats for a nap. We had been through a lot these past few days. When the train began rolling forward into the darkness, Chris cleared his throat and turned to me.  
“I didn’t tell you this,” he started in a low voice.  
“What’s that?” I asked him.  
“Lars and I started a contest.”  
“What kind of contest?”  
“To see which of us you’d choose for yourself,” he explained, “and it revolves around the prospect of your financial aid for school falling through. If Lars wins, he’ll take you home with him to the Bay Area. If I win, I take you back to Seattle with me.”  
I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “You guys would do that for me?”  
“Totally. After everything you’ve been through with your parents and your brother, it’s time for you to turn the page and move on with the boy of your dreams and call him your own. You read my letter, after all.”  
“I did, yes.”  
“So,” he began again with a shrug of the shoulders, “it’s up to you, Marie, babe.”  
I was stunned by the sound of this. I liked Chris and I liked Lars, and I slept with the latter, but to hear this made me wonder if my choice to become a fan writer involved in the arts was the best decision after all. Art flowed through my veins but Chris and Lars hung before me like a pair of incubi ready to take me away to their little niches of the sexy world.  
“It’s up to you,” he repeated as we peered into the seat before us at Lars nestled down in his seat and it took me a minute to realize he had rolled over onto his side and his feet up on the empty one next to him. The swaying motions of the train had already put him to sleep. He kept his face out of my line of sight but I flashed back on the first night he and I slept together, and he had the softest, sweetest expression on his face. Maybe it was the round, full shape of his face, or maybe it came from the fact he had been a gentleman and a sweetheart to me this whole entire time, but I saw Lars for himself by mere observation of his sleeping expression.  
But on the other hand, Chris snuggled closer to me, and I remembered how much he had been keeping me company all this time even as my home life crumbled. He was the tall dark man with the howl of a singing voice and the long wavy dark tendrils cascading from every inch about his head. He let me cuddle with him, too.  
I never answered Chris as we stared out to the darkness, the cavernous void of the ocean in the nighttime, and the overhead canopy perforated with the glittering stars. At some point, we both dozed off, but then I awoke to the sound of his voice.  
I opened my eyes to the rich violet sky looming over the ocean and I wondered if we were near the Bay Area at the point.  
“Marie, I have an idea,” he whispered to me. “It’s crazy, though.”  
“What is it?” I croaked out, rubbing my eyes and turning to him.  
“There’s an empty compartment in the car behind us, and you know you’ve been talking about wanting to do it with me--”  
“Right.” I stopped when I realized what he insinuated to me.  
“So do you wanna--? Or do you want to wait? Because I can wait if you’d like.”  
“No, let’s do it. Just so long as we keep it quiet, though.”  
“Okay.” In the dim light, I watched him stand to his feet and, after rubbing my eyes again, he guided me past Gina and Jerry, both of whom had fallen asleep next to one another, and she lay her head upon his shoulder, and past Lars, whom of which was still sound asleep, to the neighboring car and the compartment in question. Chris slid open the door and we were met with a narrow room with a small black leather seat tucked against the wall.  
I shut the door behind us as he leaned back against the wall.  
“Okay,” he started. “Follow my lead.”


	13. The Matches

I awoke to the feeling of something soft and gentle next to me, and I had to lay there for a moment before I remembered I had Dave’s teddy bear with me. But another moment passed when I remembered Lars lay next to me on that sofa bed, and thus I had two soft things cuddled next to me. I opened my eyes to the sight of his round face, soft and sweet with slumber, and his smooth brown hair pulled back from the side of his face and neck. I never realized the smallness of his ear, like it had been taken from a doll. I reached up to touch the tip of my nose, which felt cold as ice. No wonder why he wanted to snuggle close to me.  
I nestled closer to him, the teddy bear right in between the two of us. Since we were the sole people there in the sun room on the patio, I reached around his shoulder to hold him. I kept my head close to his face to better hear the steady, heavy sigh through his nose, and to relish in the clean smell of his hair. I stared at the tip of his button nose and thought about kissing it.  
The memory of last night hung fresh in my mind as I smelled the tacos on the collar of his shirt. He ate so much food, and that was before Ray and Eileen’s house burned down. But he fell asleep here on the sofa bed before I could do anything more than rub his belly for him. I stroked my hand along the side of his face and before I could move my lips in to kiss him, his eyes popped open.  
I smiled at him. “Good morning, sunshine,” I greeted him.  
He cleared his throat.  
“Good morning, my sweet,” he returned the favor in a near whisper.  
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.  
“Hungry.”  
“Of course.” I giggled at him.  
“And very, very toasty. I... do not feel like getting up right now.”  
He knitted his eyebrows together; I glanced down to see the shape of his hand moving about underneath the covers.  
“Is that you I feel?”  
“That’s Dave’s teddy bear.”  
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Dave let you borrow that. I don’t know why because you have me next to you.”  
“You and your soft, warm drummer’s body,” I teased him.  
“Tennis player, too,” he added.  
“You and your soft, warm drummer by night, tennis player by day body,” I corrected myself.  
“There we go! Now you are cooking.” As soon as the words left his lips, a quiet rumble sliced through the quietness of the room.  
“Was that you?” I asked him.  
“It was.” He groaned in his throat as he rolled over onto his back. I gazed on at the side profile of his face as he swallowed and then parted his lips.  
“I do not want to get up,” he repeated, keeping his eyes closed.  
“Then don’t.”  
“But I am hungry, though.”  
“Would you like breakfast in bed?”  
“Now if you did that,” he started, rolling his head over the pillow, “you would have to grab your pants off of the floor and get dressed. And--” He nibbled on his bottom lip.  
“You don’t want people getting the wrong idea,” I stated, rubbing my eyes.  
“No, no--it’s not that, especially since we were the only ones to come in here after the fire. Aside from that, I have no doubt what people are saying about us and so believe me, Marie--it is not that. Trust me, darling. It’s just--”  
“What?”  
“I feel--”  
“Yes?”  
“Lars? Marie?” Jerry’s voice called through the door behind us.  
“Jerry?” Lars replied.  
“You guys awake?”  
“Yeah,” I called out.  
“Breakfast will be ready in about five minutes--we need your mouths.”  
Lars rolled his head over the top of the pillow again to look at me with those green eyes.  
“That is our cue, min skat,” he told me with a wink. He rolled out of bed and stood to his feet without another word.  
“Eat to your heart’s truest, deepest, rawest, and most sincere desire,” I called after him, pushing myself onto both of my hands.  
“I always do,” he assured me with a playful smirk on his face and a raise of his eyebrows before he stepped out of the door. I pushed the covers back to reveal the teddy bear and to expose my body to the cool air within the patio. I crawled out of bed to find my jeans piled on the floor next to his pants and his tennis shoes. I picked them up and tugged them over my legs, and then I looked around the room for my bra and my top.  
Once I was dressed, I headed into the kitchen to see Lars and Gina at the table with plates full of food before them. I assumed Chris was still asleep in the living room as I made my way to the cupboard for a clean plate for some of that stack of pancakes courtesy of Zelda.  
As I sifted a bit of powdered sugar onto my stack and then for a fork, I heard the front door open from across the house.  
“Zelda?”  
“Chloe?” Zelda called from the room next door.  
“I can’t believe their house burned down,” Gina was saying as I took a seat in between her and Lars.  
“Yeah, I wonder what Ray and Eileen going to do now,” I said aloud.  
“Stay here, maybe?” Lars suggested as he sloughed off a bite of pancakes: he had a full stack of six before him, sprinkled with powdered sugar and with lots of butter on top. I could not forget the softness and the warmth of his body against my fingers: I was somewhat tempted to tell him to eat up more and more but I had no idea if Gina would have a laugh and a scoff at that. After everything that had happened, I started to wonder if I could have a chance with Lars, just so long as my financial aid fell through and I had to leave school.  
“Not a bad guess,” said Gina, mopping her bite of pancake in a bit of syrup, “I mean, this is Zelda’s house after all.”  
“Zelda, you have--the key to Dave’s place in La Mesa right?”  
We turned our heads to look out the doorway of the kitchen into the hallway and at the sight of Chloe standing there before the guest bedroom door, wearing nothing more than a towel.  
“Yes, why?” Zelda asked as she emerged from out of the room.  
“What happened to you?” I demanded.  
“Never mind--what happened,” she stopped me in a curt tone before returning her attention, “--just--give me--the key.”  
Zelda darted out of the guest room and into her room for the key to Dave’s house. She handed Chloe the key, who then wheeled around back to the front door.  
“I’m curious now,” Lars confessed, and I nodded my head at him.  
“Me, too.”  
“Maybe she got caught up in the fire and got out by the skin of her teeth,” Gina suggested with a shrug. We fell back into silence as we proceeded to eat up our pancakes.  
Zelda promised to drive us all to the train station so as to head up to the Bay Area to hang out with Dave and see that band Nine Inch Nails before school started again. The train left at such a late time, which meant we all hung out at Zelda’s house until the sun went down. And as Chris, Lars, and Jerry all stepped out onto the porch for a drink, I could feel the autumn sinking upon us with the coolness following the incoming darkness. The whole day, I kept thinking about what Lars was about to tell me there in the sun room but with every opportunity that arose, something else interrupted me and thus I lost the chance to ask us.  
As the two of us packed up everything before the ride to the station, Jerry called Gina and me out to the front porch. We headed to the screen door to see him and Chris both leaning against the rail: the latter held something small and square in one hand to display it to us.  
“What is it?” Gina asked.  
“It’s a matchbook,” said Chris, turning over the object. “From—where the hell is that?”  
He handed it to Jerry, who stared at it for a moment before speaking again.  
“Vegas,” he replied in a low voice. “It’s that hotel you guys have your cars parked at, the one on Tropicana Boulevard, literally right off of the Strip. It was just... right here, right on the porch. Lars pointed it out to us.” He paused for a moment and then he realized what was happening. “Wait a minute, you guys know what this is, right?”  
“No, what?” asked Gina as she folded her arms over her chest.  
“It’s a calling card.”  
“From whom?” I kept the questions coming.  
“My crazy bitter bitch of an ex-girlfriend, that’s who. It’s very clear to me now that she’s out to get you guys.”  
“You guys ready to go?” Zelda called from the kitchen, jingling her car keys.  
“Just about, yeah,” I replied to her. Lars took one final swig of his drink before he climbed to his feet, and the three of them filed back into the house to join us. I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him in place.  
“Also,” I started in a quiet voice, “what were you going to say to me in the sun room this morning?”  
He licked his lips and shifted his weight; he took a glimpse to his right to make sure we stood out of earshot before he cleared his throat.  
“I really don’t... want to tell you right now,” he confessed in a low voice. I lay a hand on the bottom half of his shirt to feel his warmth again.  
“Are you sure?” I asked him in a near whisper.  
“Positive.”  
“Perhaps something’ll change your mind--” I brought my lips closer to him, but before I could do anything, Zelda’s voice caught our attention.  
“Marie? Lars? You guys coming?”  
“Yes!” I sighed and let go of him; but while we walked out of the back door to her minivan, I thought about at the very least touching his hand, but I never did as we climbed in for the ride.


	14. The Teddy Bear

Chloe Zimmerman was the eldest of Eileen’s daughters--and she was the one who had more of a will to protect Gina and me perhaps more than Zelda Lawrence. She had told me, from the day I met her that it came from hanging around Dave over in La Mesa for such a long time, and then when he moved in with her, the whole mindset of protection and defense picked up momentum. The two of them were half-sisters: she from Eileen’s first marriage while Zelda was from her second, and meanwhile, Ray was her third and longest union. After the house had burned down, Chloe and Zelda agreed to allow us all to stay between the two of them, par Chloe had the keys to her and Dave’s place over in La Mesa, and that is until I found my way back to Albuquerque to get the rest of my things out of my old family house.  
Thus, when Ray and Eileen’s house burned to the ground, we found ourselves staying down in Chula Vista with Zelda, about an hour away from Gina’s parents’ house and a mere ten minutes from my mom’s house, except as far as I knew, Mark hung around there, looking out for me. I knew he meant well, but after what happened between the two of us, I had no doubt he wanted to ask me questions. Questions I had no desire answering because I had already answered them to the paparazzi when Painted in a Corner was picked up for publication.  
I kept close to Chris as we ate our dinner in Zelda’s tiny cramped wooden kitchen, cramped from all of us congregated in there around the table. I had a feeling about him, especially following our first encounter with each other. Lars, Jerry, and Gina sat to my right, while Chloe had taken her seat in what she called “Dave’s chair” right across from me.  
She looked nothing like Zelda: she was short, shorter than me and Lars in fact, and very slender, with short blonde hair which she sometimes wore in a ponytail on the side of her head, and milky white skin, white as a ghost; she also spoke with a slight stutter and thus I learned quickly that one must be patient with her. She often had this look in her gray eyes as if she was about ready to burst into tears at any given moment.  
“Thank you, Chloe,” I told her at one point upon swallowing a bite of rotelli pasta covered in melted cheese, and she nodded at me.  
“It’s-s my pleasure--” she replied, scooping up a crown of broccoli; she eyed Lars scooping himself a second helping of pasta. “Have-Have as much as you want,” she encouraged him, “there-there-there-there-there’s plenty on-on-on the stove.”  
He nodded as he took another little bit of pasta before offering the big spoon to Jerry.  
“So Dave’s up in the Bay Area, right?” Chris asked her; she nodded her head as she took another bite.  
“Yeah, we’re going to train up there tomorrow,” Jerry told him, “the bitch is the trip is later in the day so we’re all going to be sleeping in those vertical seats.”  
“Couldn’t get those beds? In the cars for the long haul trips?” asked Lars, holding his fork before his mouth.  
“Too pricey. Besides, you just want to be a man of leisure.”  
“S-S-So where’s everyone sleeping?” Chloe asked us.  
“There’s that sofa bed out in the sun room,” I pointed out. “Unless one of you guys wanna bunk with me on that, I’m calling that.”  
“Jerry and I’ll take the guest room,” Gina offered. “That is, if Zelda’s kind enough to let us go into her bedroom.”  
“There-There-There-There’s a blow up mattress--I-I-I-I can sleep on that.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“P-P-Positive. And-And-And you Lars?”  
“Eh, I’ll just take the couch in the living room,” he told her with a shrug. “Or that tall man recliner. Unless Chris wants to sleep foot to toe.”  
“You mean ‘head to toe’,” Chris corrected.  
Lars hesitated, his mouth full of pasta and broccoli.  
“...right,” he muttered to himself; I couldn’t help but giggle at him. I thought about reminding Lars that we had bunked together at Ray and Eileen’s house, but as far as he and I both knew, no one need not know about all of the soft touches I had given to him. No one need not to know about the softness and silkiness of his lips or the heat of his breath against my neck. He did look at me out of the corner of his eye at one point as if he was picturing me without any clothes. He had done that right before we slept together. I knew about that “look”, stripping me down to my underwear using nothing more than his eyes. I knew of his intention even from that one intense encounter.  
Throughout that whole dinner, I thought about wanting to get in bed with him again, maybe bringing Gina and Jerry along with the ride. I was somewhat in disbelief at those thoughts, ever since mine and Gina’s very first sleep over together, and I learned about Jerry, it was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I needed a release and I needed the help of a boy, a soft boy like Lars or a tall dark and handsome like Chris or Ben. One of these boys needed to touch my girls again or else I was going to start going up in flames myself.  
Zelda showed up back at the house from her work by about ten thirty, and at that point, we all were exhausted from the rush of escaping a house fire that day. All I wanted to do was brush my teeth and then change into my pajamas, and climb under those clean sheets on that sofa bed out on the patio.  
I opened the back door to the sun room, a small but cozy room with a pair of skylight windows on the ceiling, a large bay window to my left, the sliding door to the porch right before me, and then the back door leading out to the garage to my right. I kept the lamp next to the arm of the couch turned on as I climbed into bed without my pajama pants on over my legs. No sooner had I snuggled down in between the two pillows Chloe had lent me when I spotted a small brown teddy bear on the floor underneath the windowsill.  
I hadn’t had a teddy bear since we moved out to San Diego from Albuquerque! Thus, I scrambled off of the other side of the bed to pick it up and hold it close to my chest as I climbed back in bed. I checked the tag on the back of the leg; written in messy penmanship in black pen ink: “Property of Dave Mustaine.”  
“Aw, this is Dave’s teddy bear,” I said aloud, stroking its head, “I’m sure he won’t mind.”  
The door next to me swung open; I gasped at first but then I saw Chris emerging from the kitchen. He showed me a kind little smile as he shut the door behind him.  
“Hi. What you got there?”  
“Dave’s teddy bear,” I told him.  
“Dave has a teddy bear? Oh, God.”  
“I know.” I cleared my throat. “So--what’chu doing in here?”  
“Lars has the tall man and I ain’t sleeping on that lumpy couch.” He took a seat on the edge of the bed right next to my knees in order to unlace his boots. I licked my bottom lip. He was right there, right before my eyes and my finger tips, within mere inches of my lips, and my hips and thighs.  
“Besides,” he started again in a lower voice; he took off his right boot before he turned to me, “who’s going to bunk with you tonight?”  
I chewed on my bottom lip.  
“Take off your other boot,” I commanded him. He did, and then he took off his shirt before crawling over my feet to the space on the bed next to me. I held Dave’s teddy bear close to my chest as he brought his face closer to me.  
“I want you to experience me,” I whispered to him.  
“Alas--I want you to experience me,” he returned to me.  
“But I want you to feel me,” I insisted, “--feel me as though our first encounter together never happened. I want to feel like the taste of temptation upon your lips. To sear through your mind and your body like a little drop of black rain hot on the heels of a forest fire. I want you to feel so primal with me that I am there with you as I strip you down to the bare bones. I want to fuck you like an animal.”  
“Chris?” Jerry’s voice called through the door. Chris closed his eyes and bowed his head forward: strands of his wavy dark hair fell upon my forearm and the top of my thigh.  
“Yeah, man?” he called out, keeping his head down.  
“Could you come in here? I need to talk to you about something.”  
“Shit,” he muttered; he lifted his head to stare hard into my eyes. Three inches from my face and I could smell the peppermint on his breath from his brushing his teeth. “I’ll be right back.”  
“I’ll be waiting,” I assured him with a wink. He clambered out of bed, not bothering to put his shirt back on as he returned into the house. But, much to my chagrin, even as I lay down on the bed and kept the teddy bear to the side of my body so he would look at my chest upon walking back in, I had fallen asleep.


	15. The Two Garages

I awoke on the spare bed in a strange room, and it took me a second to remember we had come to Rob’s house not too far from the former site of Ray and Eileen’s house. It was going to be another long day for all of us: I could feel it in my bones.  
A loud thud outside of the bedroom door startled me. I hesitated there in the bed, underneath the sheet and the blanket in anticipation. There was silence, and then the noise happened again with the breeze outside. The door out to the backyard! I had forgotten about that door, how Rob had warned us about not closing it all of the way.  
I lay there on my back for a bit, staring up at the ceiling, and thinking about all of the boys, including the ones I had slept with. But then I thought of Chris, how he and I had yet to have an intimate moment alone and an encounter. I thought about his kindness to me, especially on the night we finally met one another. When I closed my eyes, I pictured his skin underneath the tips of my fingers, his black wavy hair woven through my fingers...  
And then the door thudded again, a loud bang that shook the walls of that spare room. I had no means of telling the time, either, and thus I had no idea if Rob or anyone else was awake in the house, or anyone was home like on the morning of our first sleepover party. The door banged on the frame again and that time I climbed out of bed onto the stone floor. I covered my chest with my forearm as I stepped out of the room into the chilly garage.  
I gasped when I saw Lars folding something over the lid of the washing machine. He turned around and raised his eyebrows at me.  
“What are you doing?” I asked him.  
“Doing--Rob a favor,” he answered, picking up the folded shirt and putting it on top of the stack before him. “Is it chilly in here, or are you just happy to see me?”  
I looked down to see my left nipple poking out from over my thumb. It was just a little slip of my hand and my arm, but it was enough to show off to him. I lifted my hand to cover my nipple but he already raised an eyebrow at me.  
“I was just going to... shut the door,” I told him.  
“Oh? Oh, I see, right, right, right. If one doesn’t close it all the way, it--bangs--on the side of the frame. I was going to fix it myself, but... that is kind of you, though, Marie.”  
The tip of his tongue slithered out of his mouth, from one corner to the other.  
“That was quite the night,” he told me in a low voice as he reached for the next and final shirt on the lid of the washing machine.  
“What, when we got--close?” I asked him, knitting my knees together to keep the warmth in my body, and also to cock out my hips. He turned his head in such a way that his eyebrows appeared darker and thicker than in truth. He stuck out the tip of his tongue yet again.  
“You know, Marie,” he began, keeping his voice down low and husky, and returning to the shirt before him, “I must tell you that... when I got your letter, I had no idea what to expect. And that thought persisted when we met, and even more when we lay in bed together at the house. And to be honest, I still don’t--”  
“I think you’re sexy,” I blurted out, interrupting him and stopping him right in his tracks for a moment. He set the shirt down on the stack as the door shut again, right behind me.  
“Case in point,” he proceeded as if nothing happened. He lunged for me but I dodged back to the outside wall of the guest room. I pressed my back to the wall, the cold of the floor and the garage further sending chills across my skin. I shut my eyes; Lars stroked my shoulders and my forearms. I could feel the warmth of his body upon against me.  
“You think I’m sexy?” he asked me, his voice a near whisper. I opened my eyes to see his pupils dilated and his lips parted as if beckoning a kiss from me.  
“Absolutely... hot,” I breathed out. “Lush. Erotic. Seducing me with that accent and those green eyes. Remember when on that night together I rubbed your belly for you?”  
“Oh, Christ, how could I forget,” he reminisced, his eyes rolling back into his head.  
“I’m about ready to do it again,” I admitted, glancing down at the bottom hem of his shirt.  
“It’s too bad, though,” he said, raising his eyebrows.  
“How so?”  
“Chris has been checking you out as of late. So has Jerry.”  
I dropped my arm to show him my bare chest.  
“I want you,” I whispered to him.  
“I want you--inside of me,” he whispered back to me, his words creeping over me like feathery fingers. “I am obsessed with you.”  
“Obsession that burns?” I asked him, running my fingers upon the base of his head; I entwined a lock of his lush hair around each of my fingers.  
“Burns deep... right from the head of my dick down to my toes. I want you and I need you. I need you more than any morsel of food, more than any drop of booze... I need you. Please. Touch me. Make love to me again...”  
He let out a shaky breath as he lingered before my lips. This was it: I was the riot grrrl ready to do it again with Lars. We had already had our little round of lovely love in Ray and Eileen’s house the night before the flames engulfed the place, but I could feel it inside of me, that tingling sensation digging in the pit of my stomach and further down towards my hips. I leaned my back against the wall. I was ready. He was ready, as I slipped my arms around his waist. Feel that soft flesh against my skin again.  
And then the door opened. He gasped and leapt out of my arms, back towards the empty space where Rob’s car should have been.  
“It’s okay, baby doll, there’s nobody there,” I assured him, gesturing him back to me. He peered out of the open door to the back door across the strip of yard.  
“No, no, Rob is coming--put your clothes back on, min kære,” he encouraged me. I ducked back into the bedroom for my bra and my clothes.

**********************************

After breakfast, we returned to Zelda’s house down in Chula Vista to make sure she and Chloe were alright, and if Ray and Eileen found out about the fire. Zelda was a lot like me, in that she was about middle height and had a large body that gained weight at the drop of the hat, but she had shocking black hair atop her head as opposed to my auburn red. She also let her weight spike from the start of the school year.  
She coaxed us all into the living room for tea even though we all had coffee. I accepted because she was a friend to both me and Gina. While I made my way towards the kitchen, I felt someone yank me off to the side. For a split second, I thought it was Lars, even though he was back in the living room speaking to Rob and Zelda about something.  
I turned to look down the short hallway to Zelda’s room when he clasped his hands on either side of my face.  
“Kiss me,” he pleaded in a hushed voice. “Please--I can’t take it anymore. Kiss me.”  
“I want you to kiss me,” I retorted back to him. Chris brought his lips closer to me: I closed my eyes and held still for the kiss, but I never felt it grace my lips. I opened my eyes to see him knitting his eyebrows together.  
“I can’t,” he confessed.  
“Why not?”  
“Because.”  
“Because why?”  
“Because I just can’t. I just can’t do it.”  
“Come on,” I begged him, stroking my index finger upon his chest. “Come on, you know you want it.” I lingered closer to his ear: I licked my lips such that he could hear me, but I never ran it along the rim of his ear if that was what he wanted.  
“Daddy,” I whispered.  
“Marie?” Gina called me.  
“Just a second!” I returned to him and the look of lust in his eyes. I leaned closer to his face.  
“Marie,” Gina called again, in a flat tone of voice. I whirled around to see her standing at the mouth of the corridor with her hands on her hips and a befuddled look upon her face. “What are you guys doing?”  
Chris and I glanced at one another: his bottom lip trembled at the sight of me.  
“T-T-Talking,” he stammered.  
“About what?” Gina challenged him.  
“Things,” I followed up.  
“Things?”  
“Thingies,” Chris added, rubbing against my chest; I wanted to nudge his hand away from me but I also wanted Gina to stop asking questions.  
“Well... okay. But Rob just told me that when we went out to Albuquerque to see STP, he forgot to lock your house.”  
“Couldn’t find the key,” he called from the next room.  
“It’s under the rock on the front step,” I replied, moving away from Chris so he would stop touching me. He poked his head out from around the corner of the hall.  
“I looked, it wasn’t there,” he confessed. I gaped at him.  
“You mean this whole entire time my parents’ old house out in New Mexico has been unlocked?” I demanded, shocked. He nodded with a grim expression upon his face. I closed my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.  
“Dean and I need to get our asses back to Vegas, though,” he told me, taking his mirrored sunglasses out of the front pocket of his jeans.  
“Why’s that?” asked Gina.  
“Starts with an ‘S’ ends with an ‘asha’,” he answered. “Neither of us trust her and Jerry wants us there just in case something horrible happens to Lars and Chris’ cars.”  
“Mine’s locked, though,” Chris pointed out.  
“Yeah, mine, too,” said Lars as he poured himself a cup of hot water and picked up a bag of black tea.  
“Still--after what happened with Marie’s zine, neither of us are taking chances,” he told us. “I’ll catch ya’ll later on when the heat’s off.”  
No sooner had he left and Chris and I emerged from the corridor when Jerry brought us cups of tea. We settled in the living room for about five minutes when I caught sight of Zelda rummaging through her purse for something.  
“Back to the house then,” I heard her say to Lars.  
“My house, yours, or your sister’s?” I asked her, upon finishing my tea. But she never answered me as she led us out to the driveway and her van, and we all piled into the hard, hunter green seats and drove from her garage to the second.


	16. The Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I couldn't get enough, so I had to self-destruct.  
> The heat was on, rising to the top,  
> everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot.  
> I heard somebody say...”  
> -”Disco Inferno”, The Trammps (better known as that disco song that goes “burn, baby, burn!”)

It happened right before my eyes: right there on the second night of our sleepover at Ray and Eileen’s house, and when we were least expecting it at that, too. It was a night that will no doubt haunt me for the rest of my life, a night that marred my psyche right as Jerry told us of her name. The same woman who stole his heart was out to get me and my best friend because we wanted to publish art, and we went to great lengths in order to do such a thing. The same woman wanted to kill me in particular because she didn’t understand our intentions, and she took my business too far beyond reach.  
We were engaged in a heated game of Spin the Bottle with a used cream soda bottle, oddly enough, and Gina and I did what we could to keep the bottle going around until the mouth reached one of the boys on either side of us. We were the only souls in the house that night after we had dinner and a thing or two to drink. There wasn’t a lot of it left, but the last bit of wine left in Eileen’s wine cellar left me feeling thirsty, not just in a mere literal sense but I licked my lips as the mouth landed on Lars to my left. I felt the butterflies dance about the inside of my stomach when it landed on Chris.  
The thought of Jerry and I spending an evening alone without Gina’s knowledge gave me a sense of relief when the bottle landed on him, but it still lingered in the back of my mind when Gina and Chris gave one another a kiss. The memory only came into further prominence when she and I looked at another with the mouth of the bottle pointed at me.  
The three guys glanced at one another before turning to us in silence.  
“Well?” asked Gina, taking off her glasses and setting them down on the coffee table behind her.  
“Well what?”  
“Come here.”  
“No--you come here,” I beckoned her, gesturing for her to slide across the carpet towards me. Jerry tossed his hair back from his face as she climbed to her feet and rounded him and Lars both, and then knelt down next to me. I tossed my hair back from the side of my neck as she hovered right before my face. She licked her lips and fetched up a sigh.  
“What happens here stays here,” she told me, referring to the slogan on the back of the last copy of Painted in a Corner before everything went sideways.  
“What happens here stays here,” I echoed, leaning closer to her face. She sighed through her nose again; then I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to hers. The skin felt soft and smooth like melted butter, and she tasted of wine accompanied with cheese and crackers. The refrigerator in the kitchen made the sole noise in the whole room.  
I pulled my head back and opened my eyes to look at her right square in the face. Gina gazed on at me with a bewildered look upon her face. I looked past her at Lars, whose face turned as red as a cherry tomato, and Jerry, who reached for his glass of wine on the coffee table to give it a slight swirl.  
“That was--interesting,” she noted.  
“Yeah. Kinda--nice, actually.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jerry taking a healthy swig of wine; Lars meanwhile, fell onto his back on the carpet and his chest heaved as if he had been running a mile.  
“You okay, man?” asked Chris in a muffled voice. Lars burst out into a fit of loud cackles and rolled over onto his side.  
“Lars Ulrich, the kinky little Danish ghoul,” Jerry declared, taking another sip of wine.  
“OH!” he gasped. “OH--OH MY GOD!” He burst out laughing again: his left knee fell towards the floor to show me the crotch of his jeans and the bottom hem of his shirt lifting off the waistband to show off a bit of skin.  
“What’s so funny?” Gina demanded, climbing to her feet again; I joined her so we stood on either side of Lars’ head. He pinched his eyes shut as his cheek bones grew fuller and rosier from laughter. I pressed my hands to my hips while we stared down at him.  
“So you think two girls kissing each other as part of a dare is funny?” I asked him in a taunting tone. He opened his eyes a bit to look at us and then he started laughing again. Gina and I glanced at each other with playful smirks on our faces.  
“So you do,” she stated aloud, never taking her eyes off of me.  
“I say on this next spin if it lands on him, the two of us give him a kiss on either side of his face,” I suggested to her.  
“Ooh, I bet he’d like that,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.  
“Two girls kissing on his chubby little face at the same time? Oh, yes.” Gina ran her tongue along the edges of her top teeth.  
“Maybe kiss his tummy a bit, too?” I suggested.  
“Scandalous!” And then she stopped in her place.  
“Hey do you smell something?” she asked me.  
“Smell what?”  
She sniffled the air in the room all about us. Lars gasped for air as he opened his eyes; I watched him rub his eyes when she spoke again.  
“Do you smell that, Jerry?”  
He lowered the wine glass so as to sniff the air.  
“Smells like somebody smoking,” he admitted.  
“Yeah!”  
Lars sat upright underneath us and ran a hand through his hair to move it off of his neck. I glanced down at his staring on at Chris, but then I realized he wasn’t looking at Chris.  
“That lamp is--not supposed to be smoking, is it?”  
“Which lamp?” asked Chris, turning his head.  
“The one in the... kitchen.”  
I noticed it right when Gina and Jerry did: the black smoke billowed near the shade of the lamp next to the kitchen window. I spotted the orange and yellow flames on the table, spreading quick to the curtains and onto the window sill.  
“We should go,” Jerry suggested, downing the rest of his wine.  
“Grab your things, guys,” Gina scrambled to get our purses off of the couch. Lars shot his arms out as he lifted himself upright. Chris picked up the cream soda bottle and his and Lars’ travel bags. Jerry led us out of the living room when the floor of the foyer burst into flames right before our eyes.  
“Fucking Sasha!” he shouted. “Back door! Back door!” We doubled back to the end of the corridor to the back door of the house. He tried to push it open, but nothing happened.  
“It’s stuck!”  
“The doggy door!” Chris pointed the flap at the base of the door.  
“Of course. This is your moment to shine, Lars.”  
“I am not a dog!” he sputtered, horrified.  
“Well, you’re little! Just go out there and see if something’s blocking the door. Quickly, quickly--the flames are catching up to us fast.”  
He fetched up a sigh and then he dropped down to his hands and knees to crawl through the flap: his shoulders and hips wedged through the door by half of an inch.  
“Guess he’s not that little after all,” Chris remarked.  
“Never mind that shit--” Jerry pointed behind us at the flames spreading to the edges of the doorway of the living: I could see the whole room was engulfed in flames. That could have been us in that room had Gina and Lars not pointed out the smell of the smoke and the sight of it.  
“Someone blocked the door with a chair!” Lars called out to us; there was a loud clank outside on the porch and Jerry pushed the door open. Lars jumped back and then the five of us sprinted out to the backyard and the cool night air. We skidded to a stop at the gate near the far end of the yard to see the flames reaching the door frame. We had gotten out of there in the nick of time.  
“Holy shit,” Chris said aloud as the flames began to shine their light upon the grass.  
“Yeah, I’ll say,” Jerry added, as Chris handed Lars’ travel bag to him; he then slung it over his shoulder and ran his hand through his hair. “That’s a hot fire, too. Big question now is where are we gonna go? We can’t go to Marie’s house and Gina’s parents live too far away from here.”  
“Zelda,” I suggested to him, “she works second shifts, and she’s getting off soon, and we can walk there, too.”  
I then turned my head to Lars. “She’s got lots of food, too.”  
“I am in then!” he piped up.  
“Is it Zelda who lives in Chula or Chloe?” Gina asked me.  
“Zelda. Chloe’s over in La Mesa near Mark’s place.”  
“Oh, right, right, right. And she lives with Dave, too.”  
I lifted the lock on the gate and the five of us filed out of the yard right as the flames began to honeycomb a hole in the roof. The last thing I heard as we ventured off into the darkness was the sharp shattering of glass which meant the bathroom window blew out. But we kept walking down the sidewalk: I led the way to Zelda’s little country house about a half mile through the dark streets, lit up by the golden light of the street lamps. Sirens filled the night off in the distance.  
The cool night air kissed our skin as we hurried down the block until we reached the outer limits of Chula Vista, and those ranch style houses I had familiarized with since we moved here.  
“Let’s see...” I muttered aloud. “It’s--where is it? Where is it?”  
We turned the next right hand corner and there stood that black and white house about three doors down on the other side of the street. I recognized her van parked there in the driveway, and next to Rob’s car nonetheless; and thus I gestured for them to follow me.  
I could scarcely put words together for Zelda as we showed up to her doorstep but I had four people behind me to fill in for me as I bailed out to the spare room out in the garage for a moment. I had experienced a narrow escape and if the flames were not going to burn us alive, we would be buried under a veil of black smoke. Add to this, Ray and Eileen lost their house and there was nothing I or my friends could have done about it.  
I gave the door to the garage a hard push to assure it would not fly open while I was asleep, and then stepped into the room.  
It wasn’t much of a room, just a single twin bed with clean sheets and a short, stubby nightstand on the left of the bed, right underneath a tiny window, but I needed to sleep: the fatigue came over me in one fell swoop. I slung my purse over the bed post and then stripped off my clothes.  
I curled up underneath the covers of the bed, alone. But every time I closed my eyes, the flames flickered on the backs of my eyelids. For the first few times I shut my eyes, I ended up popping them back open and staring into the darkness. The next few days were going to be strange, that was for certain.


	17. The First Evening

I still remained in full disbelief that Gina and I were to be charged for prostitution here in the state of California, especially since neither of us did anything. That woman took it all out of context because she had a problem with seeing us in a big magazine such as The Rocket. Jerry’s words, not mine. But we both had our fear that this whole thing could have us expelled from school, a lingering fear that stayed with us since that very day. If I lost my financial aid, I stayed at the house until I ran out of money and then my fate was sealed: I would return to Albuquerque alone, given Gina couldn’t leave her dad by himself in Long Beach.  
But on the other hand, nothing was set in stone at the time. It was just a monumental “what if” which hung over our heads from the day I received that letter. But then again, if we were to be tried for it, then perhaps we could seek out refuge in Nevada and actually pretend to be hookers since they were legal, but then we could run away with our boyfriends up to Seattle; San Francisco, if Lars was willing to give his heart and his body to me. We could feign it for a while and then make our escape like a bunch of thieves running into the night.  
Ray and Eileen had trusted us with the house, which stood about five blocks from my mom’s place, while they travelled up to Seattle for two weeks with their little Jack Russell terrier Seraphim. It was a fair sized, two storied house with a plain beige shingled roof and white stucco walls, a time warp straight out from forty years ago. A low chain link fence lined the back yard and a short square gate separated the perfect square of neatly trimmed grass from the street. The front door was right outside of the kitchen, so one could sit on the porch and be within range of Eileen saying food was ready. My biggest complaint with their yard was the lack of trees: too many times the two of them would have a picnic or at least spend time together out back and they had to fish out the umbrella and two of the elongated lawn chairs from the porch behind them.  
The five of us had lay out our sleeping bags in the living room given the state of the guest bedroom upstairs. I kept the letters tucked underneath the spare pillow I had taken out of the linen closet. No one needed to know about that other one lest something happened to us and Sasha kept her word. I was willing to lie to protect my best friend as well as our little rock n’ roll boy toys. But on the other hand, I remembered what Jerry had told me before the dinner party the night before. When she told him to drop dead, he came face to face with the barrel of a gun and flashed him a blowtorch. I worried about the secret leaking out, by any circumstance whatsoever.  
I sat upright in my sleeping bag next to Gina, and the two of us leaned back against the front of the couch. I kept Chris’ letter close to my thigh, and I knew if someone else read it, I risked further trouble with the press.  
Dave had come over for breakfast on the first morning after Ray and Eileen had left for the Emerald City. His bright, fiery red hair flashed through the side window in the kitchen as he took a peek inside of the house. He stripped off his sunglasses and brought a hand to the side of his face as if he was spying on us.  
“The jolly red giant is here,” Chris declared from the counter as he poured himself a cup of coffee.  
“Don’t let him in!” Jerry cracked, and Gina and I burst out into a fit of laughter; Chris set down the mug and ambled towards the front door to unlock the dead bolt. He poked his head out for a better look at him.  
“Yeah, whaddya want?” he called across the front porch.  
“Just came over to see what’s up is all,” Dave replied as he came within earshot. Sunlight flashed upon the crown of his head before he stepped into the house.   
Lars descended the stairs, his disheveled hair drenched, his face still a bit unshaven, and his shirt nowhere to be found, and came over to us with a slight smirk on his face and a towel thrown over his shoulder: I kept my gaze fixated on that ever so slight curve coming in on his waist. Memories of our first night together rang through my mind.  
“Anyone seen my shirt?” he asked us.  
“We haven’t,” I confessed to him; I resisted the urge to add the word “sexy” at the end of that, given Chris stood right there.  
“Never understood why they insist on keeping this house,” Dave admitted as he entered the house. “There’s no insulation in the roof and a lot of the stuff in the walls looks older than all of us in here. Smells like old soup in here, too. Anyways, what’s for breakfast?”  
I set Chris’ letter on the pillow before I stood to my feet for a cup of coffee for myself. Keeping the hem of the sleeping bag around my waist, I peered behind me for my jeans.  
“We should stuff a pig,” Chris suggested.  
“Oink,” Lars muttered under his breath; I jabbed him in the shoulder and then followed it up with a giggle. He raised his eyebrows at me but he never said anything after that. I reached back to the couch cushions for my jeans when he turned his back to us. Jerry, meanwhile, glanced away as I got dressed right there in the living room. Gina stayed there right next to me as I tugged the jeans up my legs and then I let the sleeping bag fall to the floor once I fastened the button.  
“So you all ready to see Nine Inch Nails soon?” Dave asked us when I stepped into the kitchen and towards the cupboard for a clean mug. And then I remembered what Rob and Dean had told me about them, calling them the next big thing of the nineties. I was eager to leave for San Francisco within a couple of days on the train.  
“Is that why you’re here in San Diego and not back up in the Bay Area?” asked Gina. I took my seat at the table with the mug and fixed on the letter from Sasha. Maybe this was not the path I asked for if I was going to be victim at the hands of a woman on the brink of a psychotic break. I kept this in mind as I sipped the coffee before me. Ben entered my mind soon enough, and I began to wonder if he knew anything about the incident since The Rocket was based out of Seattle.  
Even though it was still summer, the coolness from the ocean sank over the house. I brought my arm to my chest lest one of the boys got the wrong idea about my nipples poking through my camisole. I thought about running back to my mom’s house for a fresh change of clothes, but then I remembered Mark had taken it upon himself to drag me out of the public eye if I even set foot in our old neighborhood, a risk I wasn’t willing to take unless I had someone with me.  
Around lunchtime, Gina found an old wine bottle from the wooden cellar in the dining room, and I knew things were going to heat up that evening, our first evening alone with the boys since we saw STP and Hole back in the spring. It felt like such a relief to have a whole house to ourselves with all of them. Once the sun started to burn off the clouds for the afternoon, and Dave had run back to La Mesa at no expense to assist Chloe with something, I thought about making myself a little snack of those round butter crackers, cream cheese, and pancetta. Once I began spreading the cheese on the top of the second cracker, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned my head to see Lars right next to me, wearing a navy blue buttoned shirt with the top two buttons undone.  
“Hi,” I greeted him, laying a piece of pancetta across the top of the cream cheese.  
“Hi,” he reiterated back to me.  
“Cracker?” I showed it to him.  
“Ooh, yes please!” He took it with an eager look upon his face. Before he took a bite from it, he gestured for me to move in a little closer.  
“Marie, I must tell you something,” he confessed in a low voice; I picked up one of the crackers and brought it closer to my lips, “and I want you to promise me that you will not tell anyone about this, either.”  
“Yeah, of course,” I told him, wiping my other hand on the dish towel. Lars shifted his weight and cleared his throat. I inched closer to him to better smell the soft musk on his neck.  
“...um, er, I had a dream the other night. About you and me.”  
I raised my eyebrows at him. I never had anyone tell me about a dream pertaining to me: it was right up there with someone writing a poem for me. He pushed his hair back from the side of his neck to better show me his smooth skin. I wanted to touch him again.  
“How did it go?” I asked him.  
“Well...” he started, inching even closer to me and lowering his hand towards his waist, “I awoke in a dark grassy field surrounded by these tall trees rising high over my head. I was flat on my back, staring straight up to the sky—”  
He cleared his throat. “—and I saw you floating over me.” I was stunned.  
“Floating? Like hovering?”  
“Kind of. Except you were...” He stopped to nibble on his bottom lip and shift his weight once again.  
“I was what?”  
He peered behind him, out to the living room and Jerry and Gina talking about something in soft voices. He returned to me with a wide eyed look upon his face as if he had done something wrong. I wanted to assure him that everything was fine, that is until he swallowed and took a glimpse down to the floor.  
“Not—wearing—any clothes,” he continued in a near whisper.  
“You dreamed I was naked and floating over you,” I reiterated.  
“Precisely. And then you... fondled me.”  
I opened my mouth to speak but no sound left my lips. He stuffed his hands into his jean pockets; I couldn’t help but direct my attention to his hips and his waist, the exact same thing that happened right before we slept with each other.  
“You fondled my body, starting from my face—like you were stroking my cheeks and then you kissed my nose as you touched my chest. Then, like our little evening together, you started talking dirty to me as you touched my stomach—” He licked his lips: his mouth was dry from what I could tell.  
“—and then, well...”  
“Well what?”  
“You... gave me... a handjob.”  
I opened my mouth even more but Chris entered the room right then, interrupting the both of us. He had one of those clear bottles of cream soda in one hand.  
“In case you don’t some wine, Marie,” he told me, “there’s those bottles of soda in the dining room.”  
“Okay, thank you, Chris,” I answered, taking a bite of cracker. He then gestured to Lars accompanied with a knitting of his eyebrows.  
“Where’s that velvet thing you were telling me and Gina about?”  
“What velvet thing?” Lars asked, bringing his hand back up to his mouth again.  
“The one that you and Dave showed me when we came here the first time around.” Lars hesitated for a second and, once he took a bite of cracker, his face lit up. He snapped his fingers.  
“The guest room,” he answered with his mouth full.  
“Where in the guest room, though? That room’s all full of shit.”  
“Okay, hang on, let me take another one of these, if it’s alright by Miss Marie—”  
“By all means,” I encouraged him. Chris strode out of the room and, before he followed suit, Lars turned back to me.  
“No one must ever know,” he mouthed to me, and I gave him a nod before he left the kitchen. That first evening was going to be interesting for certain.


	18. The Awkward Dinner Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being patient. The earthquake today scared the hell out of me, but I managed to sit down and write 🙏🏻🔥🖤😘

We had just arrived at Ray and Eileen’s house from my mom’s place over in Skyline given Mark had caught himself up in his little power trip. I figured we would have to spend at least a couple of nights here given everything that was happening. I also knew I would have to return to Albuquerque at some point before school started again, that is if I could start school again. I wanted to forget I even got that letter, because I knew it affected both Gina and me.  
Ray bounded into his driveway and switched off the car. I spotted Eileen and her head of silvery and black wavy hair in the kitchen window stirring a pitcher full of pinkish liquid, probably lemonade.  
“Thank you again, Ray,” I told him, unbuckling the seatbelt in the front seat.  
“My pleasure, hon,” he replied as his knobby hands unfastened his belt and climbed out, “the last thing you need is to have your brother get his hands into all of this bullshit. Not after what happened to your mother, no way no how.”  
“By the way, where’s your dad in all of this?” asked Jerry as he climbed out of the back seat behind me.  
“He’s in Chicago right now,” I told him, “then again, he’s been in Chicago since we saw STP.”  
“Well, come on inside,” Ray offered us, “dinner is almost ready and—” He turned to Lars, who had all but stumbled out of the back hatch of the van onto the driveway. “—I hear you kids like to eat.”  
“Oh, not at all,” Lars teased him as Gina followed right behind him. We filed onto the front porch and into the front side of the house, which smelled of cilantro and roasted bell peppers. I clutched the letters close to my hip as I ducked into the living room to search for a safe place for the letters for the time being. I spotted the pillows leaning against the arm of the couch, right next to Seraphim, who was curled up right smack in the middle of the couch. Then I remembered Gina and I had forgotten to grab our things out of our house; I hoped Mark would have returned to La Mesa by the morning because I could not see us staying here with Ray and Eileen for more than a couple of days.  
“Marie?” a voice behind me called after me. I whirled around and Jerry snuck out of the kitchen to catch up with me.  
“What’cha doing?” he asked in a low voice.  
“Putting these,” I showed him the small stack of paper next to my hip, “in a spot so I know where to look for them and figure things out later on.”  
“Well—and I hate to be nosy, but what’s even in those letters?”  
I shuffled Chris’ letter to the bottom of the stack and then showed him the one from her, from Sasha. He took the letter from me to read it for himself. After not even ten seconds reading, the color in his face faded to that of wet ashes.  
“Oh,” he breathed out. “Oh dear God—oh, shit, I thought I was done with her.”  
“Wait, what?” I gaped at him. “You know who that is?”  
“Yes, I—I’m ashamed to say I do. Well, rather, I did.”  
“You did?”  
“Yeah, it’s my ex girlfriend,” he confessed in a low voice, “she’s—out of her mind to say in the least.”  
“How so?” I asked him.  
“When we were dating, there were days she’d neglect to take her pills and she lied to me about taking them. She would go on these weird ‘trips’, I called them, where she would get incredibly paranoid and lucid and I would have to hide matches and things from her, otherwise she would set fire to things.”  
“Wow. Why’d you break up with her?”  
“It was coming to a point in which she would threaten to kill not just me but my band mates and everyone I knew. She also threatened to kill herself if I left her. That obviously never happened but I had to lay low for a bit because she would come up in my rear view mirror if I wasn’t careful.” He gestured for me to move in closer towards his face. “I want you to do me a favor, though, Marie.”  
I nodded my head in affirmation.  
“My lips are sealed,” I vowed.  
“Don’t tell Gina,” he told me, “I know, that’s two secrets you have to keep underneath your collar, but I don’t want her, or you for that matter, to get caught up in the crosshairs of my personal life. Her accusing you and Gina of being whores is the least of your problems.”  
“Gina and I could lose our financial aid, though!” I pointed out to him. He knitted his eyebrows together.  
“What happens there?” he asked.  
“We get kicked out of school. She’ll go back to Long Beach—hopefully not back to New Orleans: as far as she and Harold know, her mother’s gone, and on top of that, she doesn’t know anyone there anymore. I could go back to Albuquerque because of Mark.”  
“Well, shit. Unless there’s a way to clear the charges or a way to thwart it, you ladies go back to from whence you came.”  
“Right.” I ran a hand through my hair before I pressed my hands to my hips.  
“Wait a minute. There’s us, though.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“If you lose your aid, you and Gina can come back to Seattle with Chris and me. Come live with us.”  
“But what about Lars, though?”  
“What about him?”  
“What if I choose him over Chris?”  
“Go to the Bay Area with him. He’ll take care of you. If Chris is a good caretaker, Lars will treat you like a goddess. He loves Seattle, too: he loves going up there, so it’s not like you and Gina will never see each other again.”  
“But we could still lose our money, though,” I persisted, feeling the tears well up inside of my throat. “I came here to San Diego to care for my mom and I don’t really wanna leave—” I brought a hand to my mouth. He looked on at me with his eyebrows knitted together in concern.  
“You don’t wanna leave your friends and subscribers behind,” he followed along. “It’d be like... Alice In Chains leaving Seattle because our music was stolen and we got set up or something. Or Metallica leaving San Francisco for the same reason.”  
“Probably, yeah,” I sniffled, trying to fight back the tears.  
“Well, I don’t want Gina to find out about Sasha, though, because I worry about her getting to you two, though. Whenever she was on her medication, she was herself and totally affectionate with me, but she liked to lie and when she removed herself from her meds, she turned into a totally different person.”  
“Soup’s on!” Eileen called from the kitchen.  
“Okay!” Jerry called back to her before turning back to me. “Not a word, though.”  
“What about Gina?” I demanded. He nibbled on his bottom lip for a second.  
“I’ll tell her. And that’s a promise.”  
“Okay,” I said with a nod of the head and a long low whistle through my lips. I tucked the letters underneath one of the couch pillows before we doubled back into the kitchen to join them at the table.  
“Is it alright if I took a shower here?” Lars asked Eileen as she handed him a plate of brown race, roasted red peppers, and pan fried chicken. “I did not get to take one at Marie’s place.”  
“Of course, dear,” she told him. I took a clean plate out of the cupboard and I was about to serve myself a helping of rice when Lars took the spoon out of my hand to do it for me.  
“I must be a gentleman, remember?” he whispered to me.  
“Oh, well—be my guest,” I told him. Once he gave me some rice, I picked up the spoon for the peppers and the chicken. He and I took a seat at the table next to Ray and Eileen: I gazed past her head at the lamp in the window and wondered if it worked so as to give the room a nice intimate lighting. Chris, Jerry, and Gina soon followed suit right behind us, and the three of them took their seats with us at the table, and with that, we proceeded to dig into our food.  
“When do you girls go back to school?” Ray asked Gina and me.  
“Couple of weeks,” she answered for the both of us. “On a Monday.”  
“Wow, already?”  
“We only had about two months worth of a summer vacation,” I pointed out to him. “We got out in the middle of June and then we’ve just been hanging out with these three dudes here.”  
“So what did you were doing in the living room just now, Marie?” Eileen asked. I paused, remembering I had a promise to keep with Jerry. I thought about what to say for a moment when he spoke for me.  
“She and I were just—talking.”  
“Don’t want to be nosy, but care to share?” she persisted.  
“Oh, just music and art stuff,” I went with it. “You wouldn’t be interested in it all that much.”  
“Marie, you know I taught art for years, and you and Gina both had me for your first semester at San Diego State. I know how eager you were to show me that drawing of you and Lars—”  
Lars glanced over at me with a mouthful of rice and an inquisitive look upon his face.  
“What drawing?” he asked.  
“I—” I started, feeling my face grow warm. “—made a drawing of—myself and—it was Ben, not you. I had submitted it for the final that semester, and I was so proud of it that I published it in the very first edition of Painted in a Corner.” He swallowed his bite of rice before speaking again.  
“How come I’ve never seen it?”  
“It was well before you, Chris, and Jerry showed up. I also did it for school.”  
“It’s something very near and dear to her,” Gina chimed in.  
“Has he seen it?” asked Chris.  
“As far as I know, no,” I replied, and then I remembered I had left the first edition of Painted in a Corner in the back of Rob’s car. In other words, there was no way Ben could have seen the drawing. But The Rocket had published a full opinion editorial about my zine, and in the wake of Sasha’s letter to me, I had no idea for sure whether or not Ben had seen the drawing.  
“So what were you two talking about in there?” Eileen continued as though we never digressed on a tangent.  
“We were—” I started, ginger with my words, “talking... about—”  
“Alice In Chains’ new record!” Jerry interjected.  
“Already?” asked Chris as he scooped up a bite of rice and bell peppers.  
“Yeah.”  
“What’s it called?”  
Jerry paused with his lips parted a bit and his eyes fixed upon me.  
“Her,” he blurted out, slurring his speech.  
“Come again?”  
“Dirt,” he repeated.  
“Dirt?”  
“Dirt. Yeah, Dirt. I can’t really say anything else, ‘cause you know, these sorts of things need to be kept confidential.”  
“Understandable. When can we expect to see it on record shop shelves?”  
“Later this year. Or next year. I can’t say. You know, studio time and producing and seeing if Layne, Mike, and Sean are up for it.”  
“I see. Makes sense.”  
We fell back into silence for the rest of our dinner party and then, once he and I helped Eileen clear the table, Jerry and I returned to the living room, where Seraphim still snoozed on the couch cushions. He sighed and ran a hand through his blond hair.  
“Well, that was awkward,” he remarked. “Guess I might have to tell Gina after all. You know how curious she is.”  
“Absolutely.” I lifted the pillow to take the letters out of hiding. I hesitated with them in hand, thinking about what to do with them next.  
“The guest room is a mess, you guys,” Chris declared from behind us: the sudden sound of his voice caused me to almost drop the letters onto the floor.  
“It is?” Jerry sputtered; I gathered myself and held the letters to my chest before turning around to see him.  
“Yeah, it looks like a tornado hit it. So where we all going to sleep tonight?”  
“We have sleeping bags in the closet upstairs,” Ray called from the kitchen, over the clank of dishes and the trickle of water from the faucet.  
“Yet another slumber party,” Jerry chirped, showing me a mischievous grin.  
“But I’m sure one of you will get to take the bed in our room tomorrow night, though,” he continued.  
“What for?” asked Chris.  
“Eileen and I are traveling up to Seattle tomorrow. We’re taking the Little Miss on the couch there with us, too, because we just rather we did.”


	19. The Second Letter

I awoke in my own bed and to the feeling of something next to me. I rolled over part of the way onto my back to see what was there and I caught a glimpse of Chris' head nestled against the pillow next to me. I felt a bit disappointed to see him laying there instead of Lars. The memory of sleeping with him hung so fresh in my mind: his warm body against me, the scruff on his face rubbing against my lips, and the fact his laying there filled every hole of my senses. I had never felt more alive right in that moment when he looked at me right in the eyes. I wanted to feel him and move close to him again, and even more so after that dream I had a few moments before waking.  
I stared on at Chris’ face and the fresh tendrils of his wavy black hair covering part of his brow and his slumbering eyes. I thought back to those evenings I had set aside to write to him and those emotions I had felt at the time. Maybe I saw Lars as nothing more than a crutch and a hall pass. Maybe I wanted Chris instead after all.  
He shuffled the side of his head upon the surface of the pillow in a stir, but never awoke. I wondered if doing what I did with Lars that morning would awaken him that is until I heard a gentle knock on the door.  
“Marie? Marie, are you awake?”  
I rolled out of bed and swung my legs over the edge so my feet landed flat on the carpet. Careful not to wake Chris, I crept over to my door and opened it up to reveal Gina standing there with tousled hair and no glasses on, and with a red envelope in hand.  
“Yeah, I’m awake,” I whispered, “what’s up? What’s that?”  
“Fan mail, methinks. I—hope I’m not interrupting anything...” She craned her neck to see who or what was in the room.  
“Nah, you’re not,” I assured her. “Fan mail, eh?”  
“Yeah, from some person named Sasha Amber... Garland, I think is what it says? This is some messy penmanship. Says up here she’s from Seattle.”  
She handed me the envelope; I flashed on that op-ed The Rocket had published about Painted in a Corner and one of the responses to it was written by a woman named Sasha Parkinson, but I wondered if the woman there had had anything in common with this woman here.  
“You and I also got letters from the financial aid office at the school, too,” she added. “Those are on the kitchen table right now.”  
“Really?” I gaped at her in concern.  
“Yeah, I hope it’s nothing serious, especially after what happened with the zine and whatnot.”  
Behind me, Chris stirred and made a noise that sounded like a cat purring.  
“Guess I better get my ass back to bed,” I told her in a hushed voice.  
“Yeah, me, too—Medusa.” She held her fiat for me to bump.  
“And to you, Persephone.” I returned the favor; I returned to the bedroom while she stepped back out to the hall. Chris continued to sleep, this time with his back to me as I ambled back to my bed, but never climbed back in right next to him.  
Careful not to make any noise with the parchment paper, I slid my fingers underneath the back flap of the envelope and opened it right there. I took out the letter, folded in thirds, and then unfurled it. Whoever this Sasha person was had taken the liberty to writing with perhaps an old typewriter while smoking because the paper smelled of firewood:

Hello, I am sure you don’t know me, but if you don’t recognize my name, I wrote that response to The Rocket following publication of your art, Sasha Parkinson. I want you to know that you have no right to publish such intimate details of my boyfriend and me, even if it was in art form. I know about the whole gist of freedom of expression, but understand the lasting consequences this has for myself and my family.  
Once upon a time, perhaps whilst you and that Danish brat Lars Ulrich both were in school, I had fan art sent into a magazine, I had signed the release forms and everything for it to happen and go through, but it never happened. I soon received a letter from the editor telling me to stop what I was doing, or a “cease and desist” if you don’t know what I am talking about. Granted, at that point, I was trying to start my own fanzine of art and whatnot and so to see that in my mailbox put me out of months and months of work, hard work that I put my heart and soul into.  
What I’m trying to do is warn you, that if I see your art in the next copy of The Rocket, and if it involves my boyfriend soon to be fiancé, know that I have the power to do the same to usher you off of my turf. This is not a cease and desist, but rather a precursor and to tell you an anecdote on my part so that it doesn’t happen to you or your little co-author friend. I can and will exert power of attorney and take Painted in a Corner off the market if the bullshit continues.  
With all due respect, Sasha  
P.S., if Lars asks about me, and he denies ever knowing about me, he has either bumped his head from the bus crash or he’s lying to you, girl. Same goes for Dave, too.

I had to read it twice to understand the point of the letter. I wanted to know whom she talked about when she said her boyfriend. Was she referring to Jerry and that watercolor I had made for the offer from The Rocket? Or was she someone from Ben’s past and shoehorned herself in between him and his wife? Either scenario brought a sour taste to the back of my mouth, and I felt my stomach turn at the sight of her talking about Lars and Dave in such a poor light.  
I felt my upper lip twist into a sneer at the way she wrote towards me, as if she thought I was five years old. It felt like I had read a gossip column more than a piece of fan mail.  
I set the letter down on the bedspread for a moment so as to rid my eyes of any more sleep and my memory of Sasha’s words. I thought about what to tell Jerry, that is if I had the opportunity to tell him about this letter. I picked up the letter and bowed out to the hall.  
The house was silent save for Lars’ heavy, steady breathing from my mom’s bedroom and whispers from the living room. I strode past his door, albeit with a brief peek inside: Lars lay flat on his back on top of the fitted sheet and the warm late summer morning light washed over his body. The blankets bunched around his thighs and his knees: he wasn’t naked but he might as well have had no clothes on his body as his shorts blocked my view of everything within the entirety of his hips. His head rolled in the opposite direction and thus I had a view of the incoming scruff on his jaw and his neck. I need not risk sneaking in there to give him a kiss good morning lest I be caught by either Jerry or Chris.  
I kept walking down the hall to the living room, but I stopped right before I reached the doorway and Jerry and Gina’s line of sight. I stared at the letter in my hand and I wondered if it was the right time to tell her about Sasha, especially since she had addressed the letter to me, not her. But she had as much of a byline in Painted in a Corner as much as me, and Sasha had referred to her as my co-author as well. I folded up the letter and stuffed it into the belt of my shorts: I would have to tell her later on if push came to shove.  
I entered the living room right as Jerry was telling Gina something funny.  
“Hey, there she is!” he declared in a broken voice as part of his morning greeting. His eyelids drooped a bit, and I knew he was hungover from last night. She continued to giggle as she turned her head to look at me.  
“There’s my sister from another mister!” she joined in. “So how was that letter you got in the mail a bit ago?”  
“It was... interesting,” I said, reluctant. “She said she was inspired by the zine so much that she decided to start her own.”  
“Oh, wow.”  
“Yeah, filled with art and everything. I don’t know, Gina—we might have a little competition on our hands.”  
“I hope not,” she confessed. “We’ve got some pretty devout followers, if you know what I mean.”  
“‘Morning, Chris!” Jerry spoke out of the blue. I turned to see him standing behind me with nothing more than his shorts: I stared on at his chest for a moment before I raised my gaze to his face.  
“‘Mornin’—” he replied, reaching up to rub his eyes. I noticed something white in his other hand.  
“I keep meaning to give you this,” he told me, handing me the narrow off white piece of paper; “I wrote this back in January, right before we met.” And with that, he headed into the kitchen in the next room over. In messy penmanship, I read his letter to me, a long time coming no less:

Hi, Marie—  
I want to thank you for the letter you had written to me: it couldn’t have come at a better time for me because I thought for sure I was sinking into a deep depression. My hope is that all of our shared fears vanish and our loneliness no longer leaves us feeling bereft.  
I saw a girl holding a copy of your zine when Soundgarden toured down in San Diego in April, and I stood in line at the supermarket—it was literally the day after Ben had showed up to take Jason’s place so that moment felt all the more special to me.  
All I am going to say is this, and forgive me if this feels strange or if I seem to be coming on a bit too strongly at this point in time, but I feel an odd connection I want to describe it, to your art, like seeing it makes me feel at ease. And like I said, it couldn’t have come at a far better time than that day, either. I was reconciling with the loss of my good friend Andy Wood to a heroin overdose the month before and we were headed out to Europe once we were done with the handful of dates in Southern California. The sight of your art coupled with my loneliness in Europe—in other words, no one loved or missed him as much as I did—inspired me to write two songs for a project I later called Temple of the Dog, which I did with Matt from Soundgarden, a friend of ours Mike McCready, and Stone and Jeff from Andy’s band Mother Love Bone. Our album should be hitting record store shelves, coincidentally, in April. You inspired me to create, and I can’t thank you anymore for it. In fact, Soundgarden is en route to making our first album with Ben: we’re calling it Badmotorfinger, after Badmotorscooter from Montrose, the band Badfinger, and Motörhead. We’re aiming for October for the release date.  
Anyways, I’m rambling here. I hope you have a good day, a successful school year, and I hope we can meet some day.  
All my love,  
Chris

I folded the letter back up and sighed through my nose. That was the relief and reassurance I needed to witness for myself as I headed for the kitchen. Lars stood before the counter and reached for the top of a pile of what resembled scones. I strode up to him and tapped on his bare shoulder. He turned and showed me a playful smirk.  
“Do you know anyone named Sasha?” I asked him in a low voice. He knitted his eyebrows together.  
“Sasha? Sasha...”  
“Parkinson.”  
He shook his head.  
“I do not know anyone of that name.”  
“You don’t?”  
“No. Why, did you get something in the mail asking you for me?”  
“Eh, it’s complicated.”  
“Can’t be that complicated.” I glanced behind me to make sure no one eavesdropped upon us; then I returned to him.  
“She wrote to me basically saying that if you deny her, you’re either lying or you hit your head. Same goes for Dave, too.”  
He scowled at that. “What the fuck, why would I lie about anything, especially about this woman? And I guarantee you Dave’s never heard of her, either.”  
“My thoughts exactly,” I admitted.  
“And, you know,” he pointed out, picking up a blueberry scone, “after the whole thing the other night with your brother, I feel like anyone trying to get to know us might be trying to wedge themselves in between us.”  
“We can hope she doesn’t try to oust us out of our own house.”  
“That is true. Care for a scone?”  
“Yes, please.” I took the scone, and he reached for one himself when Gina’s voice behind me caught my attention.  
“Marie?”  
I spun around to see her holding a white letter in one hand and her glasses in the other.  
“What’s up?” I asked her.  
“It’s the letter from school,” she answered in a worried tone; she put her glasses on so as to read it. Lars lingered next to me, while Jerry stood in the doorway behind her. “It basically says that due to recent controversy pertaining to our zine Painted in a Corner, my scholarship and your grant could dwindle because they assume we’ll get royalties from The Rocket. It says your name, too, so your letter probably says the same.”  
“But that was a one time thing, though!” I exclaimed.  
“I know... that’s what’s so alarming about it, too.” She folded it back up and furrowed her brow. “They assume we’ll get published again and so our financial aid is in jeopardy. What I don’t understand though is ‘controversy.’ What controversy?”  
I paused.  
“Wait,” she started again, “you don’t think that op-ed and that woman’s remark had anything to do with it, do you?”  
“God, I hope not,” I confessed.  
“If it is, that’d explain why your brother was acting so weird the other night,” Jerry pointed out.  
I turned to Lars, who covered his mouth part of the way after he had taken a bite of scone.  
“Lars, could you hand me the cordless, please?” I gestured to the phone on the wall behind his head. He nodded and reached behind him for it to give to me.  
“What do you need the phone for?” asked Gina.  
“Calling Ray,” I replied as I dialed their house number with my thumb. “I know he and Eileen are home right now. And I don’t care if he doesn’t get over here until the evening hours—after the other night, I am not taking chances.”


	20. The Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I took a sip and had a dream,  
> and I woke up in Medellín.  
> The sun was caressing my skin;  
> another me could now begin.”  
> -”Medellin”, Madonna feat. Maluma

I lifted my head to behold the heart of a corner of a room somewhere. A plain room without any sort of discernible features upon the eggshell colored walls. The floor beneath me had nothing but wooden boards as far as the eye could see, a sealed room in the middle of nowhere; and then I spotted her shadow up against my face.  
I glanced up at her, scrawny and emaciated, dressed in a white gown which flowed down to the floor: like a skeleton wearing a wet suit and with an eight ball atop her head. She seemed to float right before me, like a ghost. I lowered my gaze and spotted Jerry holding onto her knee as if she was dragging him: he had bowed his head against the side of his knee, and he wore no clothes except for a chain around his wrists and his neck. Her fingers crept over his head and his blond hair, five spidery black claws that looked as though they could tear through flesh.  
I swallowed and tried to move further back into the corner but she kept coming closer as she caressed the top of his head. Then Jerry lifted his head to show me the gaping black holes in his skull, left behind from where she ripped out his eyes. Part of his face covered in hard black granite. She had him bound to her for all eternity for all I knew.  
I peered back up at her head and the neon green eyes glaring back at me from her narrow face: the eight ball on top of her head split apart into tentacles. Slime from the tentacles splashed all around me, but I took a closer examination and saw it wasn’t slime, but rather paint. She was painting me into a corner, my own corner in the center of the universe.  
“Medusa!” I shouted, my voice going nowhere. She reached out with her other hand as if to slash my face but I ducked to miss her. Jerry opened his mouth to speak but I was met with mere silence. She took another swipe at me, that is until I slid backwards without looking first. I took a tumble down through a vertical chasm of wooden planks and vines stretching into oblivion.  
The chasm cleared and I found myself falling through the night sky, lined with silvery gray clouds and a rich gaping black ocean. I sailed through the mid-air before landing on my side on something soft and wet, like a tide pool right on the shore of the ocean. I lifted my head and glanced around. I had landed in a swamp, one dotted with low gray rectangles and minute black shrubs. A low fog drifted the soft quagmire around me and the whole landscape riddled with silence.  
I remained there in order to regather my bearings from the fall and from the fact I had just seen Medusa and the first man I ever slept with had his eyes stolen from her.  
The sound of weeping to my left caught my attention and sliced through the silence like a backwards echo. I spotted Chris kneeling before one of the rectangles on the far side of the quagmire; I stood to my feet and padded through the marshy earth to meet up with him. He never lifted his head to me as I came closer to him; I spotted a bouquet of what looked like golden yellow and pink chrysanthemums resting within his interlocked hands. He wore a black long sleeved shirt and his big black boots, scuffed up on the sides and muddy on the soles from his wading through the swamp to reach the rectangle somewhere between the ocean and Medusa.  
I opened my mouth to say something but no sound came out to give him words of comfort. I turned my attention to the rectangle, which took the shape and texture of stone. I had to bring my head almost level with his before I could discern what the epitaph said for me:

Marie Diane Newhall  
April 15, 1972 - August 1, 1991  
Sister, daughter, friend, lover  
Murdered by Medusa

I staggered back from the grave stone and away from Chris, who never lifted his head. The low cloud of fog rose up from the ground so as to shroud the tombstone and his body in darkness. I fell onto my back, onto the marshy ground; beneath the marsh stood a bed of hard rock. I snapped my eyes shut to alleviate the pain from the impact. Nothing. Nothing happened.  
I opened my eyes to the sight of a black sky over my face. The stars twinkled all around me like a handful of glitter, while the trees rose high over my head and my body like towers to the heavens. As far as I knew, the marsh had vanished from beneath me and I landed on the trunk of a tree, except I could feel more grass and bedrock than anything beneath me.  
Okay, so I didn't land on a tree. No matter what happened, I couldn’t move my body, but I could move my head over the top of the ground underneath me.  
To my left stood a monolith, a solid sheet of smooth dark granite covered in vines and spiders which stretched up to the sky along with the trees. As I kept my gaze on the spiders, I noticed neither of them were moving. I rolled my head to the right and spotted a low wall of cold black bricks, each and every one of them stacked in perfect grid pattern and held together by something bright red. I soon realized the bright red substance holding the bricks together was Medusa’s slime. She had reached this spot before me.  
“Marie,” a voice called out from before me. I stared straight ahead to the sight of Lars, walking towards me with his hair fanned out from either side of his head and his whole body naked from head to toe. He kept his hands down by his hips as if ready to draw a pair of pistols. His skin glowed like porcelain straight out of an oven. He lingered before me, his nose and lips within mere inches of my face. I kept an eye on his chest and the whole middle of his body, so smooth and glassy and dying for my touch. Was he hovering over me, or was I laying on my back? I had no idea, and our surroundings did anything but help.  
He sighed and pouted his lips for me. He closed his eyes part of the way as if beckoning me even closer to him.  
“What are you doing?” I demanded to him. But he never replied as he ran the palms of his hands over my breasts, which upon glancing down I noticed were bare naked. He brought his nude body closer to me, and I had no idea if he had an erection or not. But I could feel the swamp waters rising underneath my legs and cradling my hips. His thighs pressed against both of my hips: I thought for sure he would ride me right then and there.  
“Let me torch you,” he whispered into my ear, “come down, darling--slowly. Keep dreaming of me.”  
“Take me,” I encouraged him. “Take me, please.” He lowered his head towards my chest and the rest of my body, drenched in mud and water from the swamp.  
“Med glæde, min kære,” he whispered to me, bringing his lips even closer to my left one: meanwhile, all around us, the monolith and the brick wall both began to shake and form deep fractures in the shape of lightning bolts. The shaking began slow until the whole environment around us jerked to and fro to the point of my head spinning. “Min elskede hore--”  
I popped my eyes open to find myself back in my bedroom, dark and calm with the early morning hours. All a dream, but so real nonetheless. I sighed and closed my eyes so as to return to sleep.


	21. The Sleepover

“Alright, so we have to leave this house by when?” asked Gina, pressing her hands to her hips.  
“Some time tomorrow,” I told her, throwing Mark’s apron across the room towards the garbage can. I couldn’t believe he had done that to me, after everything he had done for me and after everything I did for him. I reclined against the back of the couch next to Jerry and across the room from Chris, who had taken his seat in Dad’s old tall man recliner. Gina stood next to him while Lars was in the other room kicking back that whole bottle of water. “The sooner, the better, too.”  
“Where are we gonna go, though?” she wondered aloud.  
“We could always go back to Ray and Eileen’s house,” I confessed.  
“We just got back here, though,” Jerry quipped. “I kinda wanna mingle here for a bit. Reminisce about the last time I was here. I know Chris and Lars want to, too.” He turned to me. “Really, who cares what Mark thinks?”  
“I do, Jerry,” I told him, heated. “I know Mark. I know what he’s like. I grew up with him. He did it with my grandparents after my parents split, and he tried to do it with my dad when my mom almost fell off the porch here. If he’s threatening to sue me because I used one of his old copies of The Rocket for the zine, that shouldn’t be taken lightly. At the same time, the joke’s kind of on him because to this day, he still has no idea where the spare key is, whereas I do. If I can find my way back here at some point with one of you guys or with Rob and Dean, he’s got no case and Dad can take care of things if he gets back here quick enough.”  
“Which means we need to get our asses back over to Vegas soon enough to get our cars out of that parking lot,” Chris concluded.  
“And you still need to get back to Albuquerque to tend to the house,” Jerry gestured at me.  
“What about the Nine Inch Nails show, though?” Gina recalled.  
“We’ll still see them, babe,” Jerry assured her, sitting upright.  
“Yeah, we’ll just have to hustle on over to Vegas,” I added. He turned to me with his hands resting upon his knees.  
“Did your mom have any liquor?”  
“Not really. She didn’t like to drink because she didn’t like how alcohol made her feel. There is a shop not too far from here, though. Like... a couple of blocks from here.”  
Jerry turned to Chris with one eyebrow raised.  
“Wanna take a walk together?” he offered.  
“Don’t see why not,” Chris replied with a shrug of the shoulders. They both climbed to their feet and headed back towards the front door; Jerry craned his neck to see inside the kitchen.  
“Hey, Lars, we’re going over to the liquor store,” he hollered, “you want anything?”  
Silence.  
“Lars?” Chris called. Jerry then shrugged.  
“Eh, let’s just go,” he said; and they walked out to the sunset without another word. Gina sighed as she folded her arms over the top of the recliner.  
“Another sleepover, I s’pose,” she suggested.  
“You and Mr. Sasstrell can bunk in the master bedroom,” I quipped.  
“Oh, no, not this again.”  
“Yes, this again.” I leaned forward to make finger guns at her. “Bow chicka wow wow in the big bed down the hall betwixt Persephone and the blond haired stud muffin of a rooster. Now there’s good ol’ booze involved!”  
She rolled her eyes at me as she let out a low chuckle. She then turned her head towards the foyer and the kitchen door across the way.  
“He’s been awful quiet in there,” she remarked.  
“Yeah—I hope he’s alright.” We both hung there, listening to the refrigerator run in the kitchen: I chewed on my bottom lip before deciding on what to do next.  
“Hang tight, I’ll go check on him,” I told her, standing to my feet and striding into the kitchen. Lars stood on the far side of the room, next to the entrance to the hall. He scanned the photographs on the wall, the ones of my parents, my grandparents, and our nuclear family back in New Mexico. I moseyed up to his side.  
“Hey,” I said to him in a low voice. He turned to me with a pensive expression on his face.  
“Hi,” he said before returning to the photographs.  
“You okay?”  
“Yeah, I just... spotted these pictures over here and I just... started thinking so to speak.” His tongue jutted out his mouth and then looked back at me again. He tilted his head to the side as he turned his body towards me.  
“I had a lovely time the other night, though,” he told me in a soft voice. I let a smile cross my face.  
“I did, too,” I agreed with him. “It was... it was pretty...”  
“Pretty?”  
“...sexy.”  
He raised an eyebrow at me as if to seduce me again. The tip of his tongue slithered out of one corner of his mouth as he pressed his hands to his hips. The sides of his hands pushed the bottom hems of his shirt up off his hips and thighs.  
“You think so?” he said, fluttering his long dark eyelashes at me; he inched closer to me. To think I touched that skin under that shirt, and to think I was outright ready to dismiss him when we first met each other. He was more of a lover than I could ever imagine. He raised a hand to the side of my face, but he brushed a strand of hair off of my temple and behind my ear. He shot out his tongue again.  
“You sure do know how to work with the tongue, don’t you?” I asked him, feeling the butterflies flurry about in my stomach once more.  
“I am the spokesman, after all,” Lars breathed into my face; he ran his fingers down the side of my face to my neck. He had such a gentle touch, as light as a feather. He stared at my lips as he moved in closer to my face. He pressed his lips to mine and I felt my knees go weak. His fingers slithered up into the roots of my hair as his kiss firmed up for me. He pressed his body up against me, and I felt myself stagger back towards the cabinet: his right thigh rubbed against the side of my hip and that was when I moved my lips away. He gazed into my eyes, and all the while with a bewildered look upon his face.  
“What? What’s wrong?”  
I paused, realizing what I had done.  
“N-Nothing,” I stammered. Lars licked his lips as he dropped his gaze down to my chest.  
“We can go slow, if you would like,” he suggested, “like how we did the other night. Nice and slow?”  
I kept my hands over his lower back.  
“It’s just—we’re at my mom’s house, and... she’s not here anymore...” A hard lump formed in my throat, and I felt the muscles in my back tense up. He knitted his eyebrows together and stroked my face with the backs of his knuckles.  
“I don’t want to spoil things between us, though,” I whispered to him.  
“Why would this spoil things between us?” he asked me in a gentle voice. I gazed into his eyes, and examined the soft look upon his face. “Really? Why, and how, would this spoil things between us, Marie darling?”  
“Because—my brother,” I sobbed, “and this house—and, and my dad’s not here—”  
He brought a finger to my lips: the soft look on his face never escaped him.  
“I am aware now, min kære,” he whispered. I felt his hand on my side, and he held onto my love handle with the softest of touch. “Come close to me. I will do what I can to comfort you.”  
“You’re so sweet,” I told him, sniffling.  
He shrugged his shoulders. “I try to be a gentleman,” he admitted. “Although I must confess, I feel I am terrible at it.”  
“No, no,” I assured him, putting an arm around his back so his chest pressed against me. Through his shirt, I could feel, even though he hadn’t eaten anything since this morning, his belly was soft, just like the other night at Ray and Eileen’s house.  
“You have been nothing but a gentleman to me,” I confessed to him, my voice breaking even more, “especially after the other night. God damn it, come here—come here, you sexy Danish man—come here and kiss me—”  
He returned his lips to mine and before he could slither his tongue inside, the sound of someone clearing their throat to my left caught our attention.  
“What’s going on here?”  
He jerked back and I gaped at Gina standing there in the doorway with her arms folded and a grin upon her face. I felt my face grow warm; I watched a warm rosy color cross Lars’ cheeks. He ran his fingers through his hair to keep it off of his neck.  
“I was...” he sputtered, “just—telling—Marie... a secret!”  
“You were getting awful close to her face,” she noted. “And her body, too. It—looked like you were gonna kiss her.”  
“It was pretty important,” I added, “like, he really doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”  
“I am just a... close up, touchy-feely kind of guy, as well,” he continued, the rosy color never leaving his face.  
“I see...” Her voice trailed off. She nodded her head at us as the grin widened even more over her face. “Carry on, then.”  
Gina walked onward down the hall towards the bathroom; Lars meanwhile returned to me and let out a long low whistle.  
“That was close,” he whispered.  
“Yeah, I’ll say.” It took me a moment to realize that I had been holding my breath that whole time. I opened my lips, and my chest heaved from the pressure; he raised his eyebrows at me.  
“Pretty hot, too,” he added.  
“Again, I’ll say. I’d say let’s go into my room and do it again but—” The front door closed.  
“That was quick,” he declared.  
“Place is closed,” said Chris from the foyer, “the hours go to six o’clock and here it is, six thirty.”  
“Aw, man,” I answered, trying to catch my breath.  
“Plus I remembered I have my flask from the last time we were out in Las Cruces,” Jerry added.  
“Isn’t that booze like two months old?” Gina was saying as she returned down the corridor to meet up with them. Lars turned to me, his face still that light pink.  
“So are you gonna sleep with me tonight?” I asked him in a low voice. The corners of his mouth turned up into a little smile.  
“If you want me to,” he said, coy. “We’d have to close the door.”  
“Obviously.”  
Gina said something in the next room and Jerry and Chris erupted into laughter.  
“Actually... to be frank, I don’t really want to risk it,” he confessed.  
“My parents’ old bed is quite comfy,” I assured him.  
“It’s a deal, darling,” he brought his lips back to mine for a gentle brushing. Without another word, he stepped out to the hall to meet up with Chris, Jerry, and Gina in the living room; soon I joined them for our little sleepover here in my mom’s house. I hoped we could run back to Vegas before Mark did anything else to oust me from my own house.  
I also went to bed that night in my own bed wondering if Lars and I could find another chance with one another.


	22. The Next Rendezvous

I lay down on my side next to Lars on the surface of the guest bed. He reached up with his free hand to touch my shoulder: his fingers stroked down my skin towards my chest and the edges of the cups of my bra.  
“Did you unhook?” he asked me.  
“I did. On the way up here.”  
I moved my shoulder back so he could tug the cup off of me: I relaxed my arm to help him. He ran his fingers down the top towards my nipple. The light touch of his finger was enough to form a needle point. He placed the side of his head against the backs of his knuckles as he ran the tip of his finger around my nipple until I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I lunged forward and threw myself onto him: I had a tingling damp sensation emerge right in between my legs. He clasped onto my shoulders as I rolled on top of him. He started to breathe heavy.  
“Come to me,” he whispered into my face. “Give it to me.”   
I pressed my lips to his and snapped my eyes shut: I could feel him spreading his legs underneath me. His lips were soft and smooth, still tasting of dark chocolate, Gouda cheese, and red wine, and his hands glided over my back. I ran my fingers through his lush hair: my lips caressed over the first beginnings of stubble around his mouth. I tilted my head to kiss that scruff, to feel it against my lips and bring more of that damp sensation between my legs. He rolled his head over so I could better kiss his neck; his tongue lapped out of his mouth and he gave me a soft, shaky moan right into my ear.  
I lifted myself off of him so my knees lay on either side of his hips. I took off my bra all the way, and placed it onto the floor next to the bed. His chest heaved even more than when we lay downstairs in the living room.  
“You know what I really like?” he started, his voice breaking.  
“Cheese and biscuits?” I cracked. He burst out laughing and then he lifted up his shirt to show me his stomach again, almost perfectly flat except for an ever so slight curve around his waist. Even hotter now that I had light over my head and shining down onto him.  
“My goodness, that’s a sexy belly,” I remarked, running my fingers down the soft smooth skin to the top of his underwear. “Very sexy indeed...”  
I lay my hands flat on his waist and gazed into his eyes: we had just gotten started downstairs and now his gaze filled with lust.  
“You ready to ride the lightning, min kære?” he asked me.  
“Only if you can handle the shake of the seat, big boy,” I teased him, peeling back the elastic to expose him. I returned my hands to his waist to feel something soft as I straddled his hard length. He parted his lips as I gyrated around as if churning butter with my hips. I had forgotten the springs in the mattress creaked if there was enough movements on top of the bed: the springs bounced underneath us with those hard metallic cricks and creaks with each of my grinds. We were doing it, doing it behind the safety of a closed door.  
He croaked out something, a phrase I wasn’t familiar with at that moment.  
“What’d you—you—you say?” I panted out.  
“I—‘rør panden’, which means ‘stir the pot’—this is hot!”  
My heart began to hammer inside of my chest as I rode him harder and harder: my skin grew warmer with each gyration. The bed springs creaked and groaned underneath us, and he gasped.  
“Come to me, daddy!” I hissed.  
“Speak for yourself—” he groaned, snapping his eyes shut; his back arched off of the bed and he showed me his Adam’s apple. The pressure built up at the base of my spine with each further movement: I huffed and gasped as if I was blowing out a series of birthday candles.  
“Oh, God—oh, GOD!” I groaned out.  
“Come on!” he commanded.  
“I’m there—I am there, baby—oh, yes—yes—yes!” I gasped at the feeling of reaching the top not once, but twice. I lashed my tongue out of my mouth. He groaned through his gritted teeth and it took me a second to realize I was digging the pads of my fingers into his soft belly. I dropped my hands onto the top of the bed and then lifted my ass off of his thighs. There was a squirting sound right underneath me, followed by a small terse splat. I stared into his face, his mouth gaping open and his eyes closed part of the way.  
“That was me, sorry,” he told me in a husky voice.  
“Don’t be sorry, you little sugar baby—you cream cheese danish...”  
“Cream cheese danish...” his voice trailed off as he closed his eyes for a moment. And then he opened his eyes again.  
“God, I hope nobody heard us,” he confessed.  
“If they did, let ‘em,” I encouraged him.  
“Ohhhhh, baby,” he groaned. “By the way, did that hit anything?”  
I climbed off of him to better look at all of the things and boxes in the room in between my bare thighs: the springs creaked even more beneath my body.  
“I don’t think so,” I admitted. “Besides, I don’t think anyone else comes in here.”  
He rolled his head over the top of the pillow, his mouth still agape.  
“You don’t?”  
“No way. Knowing Ray and Eileen, hell no. Come on—” I sat upright and beckoned him to follow me back downstairs to the air mattress.  
“Again?” He raised his eyebrows at me.  
“No. Back to bed. So—just in case we get caught.”  
“Oh, okay.” He yanked up his snug shorts and then pulled down his shirt before he rolled out of bed. He followed me out to the hall, and shut off the light and closed the door behind him. I felt him cling to me as we descended the stairs and back to the living room. The house remained silent as I guided him back to the mattress. He crawled underneath the covers first and then I curled up next to him. I put my arms around his waist to feel him once more. He groaned in his throat, one of pleasure as I slipped my hand underneath his shirt and stroked his skin.  
“Sure do like having your stomach touched, don’t you?” I whispered.  
“It’s a lovely feeling,” he said to me, “a sweet feeling that tells me that you and I are growing closer. And I know you like having your chest and your neck kissed—so when we do it again, I know where to stimulate you again.”  
He kissed my neck and I let the smile cross my face. There was a question I had in mind that had nagged me since we started to make things right between us.  
“Do you think anyone would object to us being together?” I asked him.  
He stopped: I stared at the faint outline of his head right before me.  
“Yes,” he confessed. “In fact, that was why I said I hoped no one heard us up there.”  
“No one can know about us.”  
“Never.”  
“What happens here stays here.”  
“What happens here stays here.”

I awoke the next morning to Lars laying within my arms, still sound asleep. I made sure the blanket covered us to keep my arms out of sight until I climbed out of bed for myself. After breakfast, we all made our way back over to my mom’s house since I was with friends. When we reached the porch, and filed up the ramp Mark had crafted for Mom’s wheelchair, I recognized the stone laying on the front step and picked it up to reveal the spare key, my spare key, and unlocked the front door with it.  
“Good to see he didn’t take the spare key,” she pointed out as I put the key back under the stone.  
“The spare key was a thing I did after he left,” I whispered to her as she pushed open the door.


	23. The Warning

I opened the door to come face to face with Mark, dressed in a suit and a tie as if he was headed for a wedding. I blinked several times at him, given I was not expecting to see him at this hour, especially since he made such a point to stay in place over in La Mesa, nor did I expect to see him dressed like this. But Gina, Jerry, Chris, and Lars had all hid themselves in the rest of the house: I had to deal with him straight on for myself.  
“Mark!” I declared. “What are you doing here?” He opened his coat and unsheathed a white piece of paper folded into thirds. He handed it to me; I opened it up but I read not a single word to have a bad feeling inside of me.  
“That’s a court order, sister,” he stated. “You need to be out of the house in Skyline within two days. I can’t believe I have had to do that, either.”  
My mouth dropped open as I read all of three words on the paper.  
“Why?” I demanded.  
“I need you to leave that house, Marie,” he curtly repeated as if I never said anything.  
“Why? Why, Mark?” I demanded.  
“Because--” He chewed on his bottom lip and then fetched up an exasperated sigh through his nose. “Because you are a threat to our household. Ever since you formerly published that zine, I have had phone calls coming at me like crazy from people demanding to know more about you. I don’t trust them, and that mistrust has only gotten worse since Mom died. The best thing I could do is take a day off from school so to ask you to leave the house and the property. You can only come back there if you have someone with you, be it another person or with Dad, because then I know you still have friends that you can rely on left.”  
“I still have friends!” I exclaimed. “Just because you never met any of them doesn’t mean I have none.”  
“I didn’t say you have no friends,” he argued, his tone still firm and terse.  
“Yes, you did! Yes you fucking did!”  
“No, I didn’t!”  
“Yes, you did! You just said I need to come back with someone so you know I have friends left! What do you think I am, some drifting loser and a freeloader with no one to rely on?”  
“Jesus Christ, Marie, it’s for the courts to know! Not me!”  
“You know I start school soon--where am I gonna go now?”  
“I don’t know. You should’ve thought of that before you published that damn thing.”  
“Hey, I didn’t know you were going to do this.”  
“I didn’t, either, but this is what happens when push comes to shove. So you need to get out of here, though. This is a warning, Marie. You need to leave the house or I will file a lawsuit against you to oust you.”  
Without another word, he wheeled around and stepped off of Ray and Eileen’s front porch. I watched him descend the steps with the golden glow of the porch light at his back. I thought about locking the door and barricading us in the house until he came back in two days, but I realized he was serious. Once I shut the door, I glanced down at the paper in my hands, at the state seal in one corner. But we had just returned to the house not even hours before, and all the way from Las Cruces no less.  
Gina emerged from the backyard with her glasses in her hand.  
“What was that all about?” she asked me, wiping one of the lenses with the bottom hem of her shirt.  
“This is a court order from Mark,” I began, never taking my eyes off of the legal jargon in the letter, “he's kicking me out of my own house.”  
“What?” Chris shouted from upstairs.  
“Oh, my God, seriously?” Gina was appalled by that.  
“Yeah, he gave me this guilt tripping bullshit reason about how he’s been getting calls from people asking about me.”  
“Why?”  
“’Cause of Painted in a Corner!” Footsteps from Chris, Jerry, and Lars descended the stairs right then.  
“So he basically freaked out and screamed ‘lawyer! Lawyer!’ because he wants the calls to stop?”  
“Yeah, that’s fucking ridiculous,” I scoffed at that, “but it’s also not unlike him, though. He’s been on a power trip since we moved out from Albuquerque and even more when Mom started to deteriorate. And a court order is a court order. He told me I can only come back to the house if I have someone with me.”  
I glanced up at the three men at the base of the stairs.  
“My own brother’s kicking me out of my own house,” I told them.  
“Because of your zine?” Jerry gaped at me.  
“Yes!”  
“Well, what are we going to do tonight, though?” Gina asked me.  
“Might as well spend the night here,” I told her. “We have to go back there at some point tomorrow, though. Because I want you guys to see the house again, and there’s that big water bottle I was telling Lars about on the kitchen table. I left it there before we left for Las Cruces.”  
“If we have to go back to Albuquerque soon, I’m gonna be pissed at Mark,” she grumbled.  
“Well at the same time, the joke’s kind of Mark because we have to go back there anyways because I need to check on the house. Rob and Dean were there when we saw STP there, and I know your jacket is in my room.”

I rolled onto my side on the blow up mattress laid out on the living room floor. I hoped Ray and Eileen would return soon enough for at least a day because I started to wonder if everyone I knew in San Diego, aside from Gina, started to see me as nothing more than a pariah. I found myself standing on the outside of the glass, peering into a tight woven community that knew each other but sneered at the slightest nothing of someone else wanting in.  
I thought about rolling over onto my back but upon moving my left foot back to the other side of the mattress, the feel of something long and slender caught my attention. Another body lay behind me. I turned my head back to the left side of the mattress and given the darkness, I recognized the soft smell upon a crown of long smooth hair.  
“Lars?” I whispered.  
“Yes?” he said after clearing his throat.  
“God... you’re so quiet. I didn’t even hear you get in next to me.”  
“I’m sexy like that.”  
I chuckled at that. “What are you doing here, though?”  
“The guest room upstairs is a complete mess and Ray and Eileen came back about a half an hour ago. There isn’t really anywhere to sleep other than the couch and Jerry and Chris are sleeping foot to toe on on that.”  
“Head to toe,” I corrected.  
“Right.” He fell into silence for a moment and then he cleared his throat.  
“Marie, I want to ask you a question.”  
“Go ahead.”  
“You know the day met--even prior to then, I have found myself thinking about you. I have tried to write to you and when I saw your name, I feel those--that nervous tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach.”  
“Butterflies?”  
“Butterflies, yes. I would feel them inside whenever I saw your name on your letter to me. I had the letter taped to my wall, too, so I always look at your name whenever I walked into my bedroom.”  
I turned all the way onto my back to look into his face in the darkness: I could make out the faint glisten of the whites of his eyes and the round shape of his head but nothing else.  
“You--You taped my letter to you on your bedroom wall,” I repeated in a soft whisper, careful not to raise my voice given Chris and Jerry both lay three feet away from us.  
“I did. I hope you don’t mind.”  
“Why would I mind? That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me--” I lifted my hand out from underneath the covers to touch his face, and that soft silky skin making up his cheeks. I inched closer to him until his body pressed against me.  
“What’s the question you want to ask me?” I whispered into his face.  
“Will you--” he started, swallowing.  
“Yes?”  
“Will you make love to me? Will you touch me lovingly? Will you make me forget I ever fooled around with the white stuff?”  
I held still for a moment before deciding to run my fingers through his silken hair and then press my lips to his. I moved my head back to look into his eyes shrouded with darkness before giving him another kiss. I dropped my hand to the side of his neck and then the collar of his shirt. He started to breathe harder through his nose as I ran my fingers down his chest. I gripped onto the fabric of his shirt as I upped the ante on the kiss.  
His hand held onto my lower back. I reached underneath his shirt to his waist, where his skin felt even softer and silkier. I started to breathe harder; I raised my right knee to his hip. I could feel it within my hips, I could feel that tugging sensation rising up within me, starting from right in between my legs. The thought of Mark kicking me out of my own house had escaped me at that moment. I only cared about Lars.  
He pulled his mouth back from me to look at me right in the eye through the darkness.  
“Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered.  
“I thought you said the room was a mess,” I pointed out, giving the flesh over his hip a slight squeeze, and he gave me a gentle groan inside of his throat.  
“You like that?”  
“Yes,” he almost breathed that out, “right around my ass and my waist, yes.”  
I kissed him again. “All the touches there, baby.”  
“The room is a mess but the bed is not.”  
“Okay--I worry about waking them up after all.”  
I let go of him before I rolled off of the mattress onto the carpet. I almost fell upon the stack of magazines next to the hearth, including one on top which I swore said The Rocket on the cover, but it was hard to tell. Lars and I crept upstairs; while on the way up, I reached behind my back to unhook my bra. He pushed open the door first and clicked on the light, and we were met with the small but cozy guest room, filled with boxes stacked atop more boxes. He climbed onto the narrow bed, giving me a view of the backs of his thighs all the while, and lay on his side on the far edge of the bed. He propped his head up on his right hand and then patted on the side of the bed next to him.  
“Shall I close the door?” I suggested.  
“Behage,” he replied with a wink.


	24. The Road Trip

It was nearly sunrise by the time we left the house in Albuquerque and embarked on Highway 40 headed out for San Diego in Dave’s truck. Twelve hours among the six of us through the American Southwest.  
When we passed the rocks with the petroglyphs on the edge of town, Lars nestled down next to me in the front seat, and I had no doubt the chill of the desert night bothered him. He huddled closer to me; I could only imagine how Jerry, Chris, and Gina felt in the seat behind us. Through the fabric of his coat, his body shuddered and shook, but as I hung there for a moment, I also felt a certain softness, a little bit of extra flesh on his hips. I started to wonder what it felt like under there, and I pictured myself running my fingers along the curvature of his body and then following it up with a kiss to his neck and his face, and then a sniff of his hair.  
I shook my head as I tried to rid myself of those thoughts. I wanted Chris, and I felt sure of it. I wanted him, I needed him. But Lars sat right there right next to me, huddled down like a little emperor penguin, and he was about to do so for twelve hours. Twelve hours of the desert and feeling Lars pressed right up next to me.  
His shivering made the muscles in my side tense up at first: I dipped towards the inside of the door, but then I noticed the sun began to rise up over the Sandia Mountains, right at our backs. The first rays of golden Southwest sunlight shone straight into the side mirror to my right. If I leaned against the inside of the door, the light glared into my eyes. And yet, if I moved closer to the middle seat, the glare subsided but I found myself close to Lars’ body. Not too bad, and he had been kind to me the whole entire time we had known each other, ever since that first evening in Flagstaff. I might as well show him a little extra comfort.  
At one point, he turned his head, and squinted at me through the early morning twilight, and flashed me a cute little smile. On his other side, Dave reached into his shirt pocket for his sunglasses and, once he revealed them to the light of day, he gave his flaming red hair a toss back from his face.  
“Gonna be a good day,” he declared aloud, running his fingers through his hair once he had the glasses on.  
“A long day,” Gina added.  
“We can do it, though,” I assured her, “if we did it with Rob and Dean, we can do it with these four fellas.”  
“You guys also came up from Las Cruces,” Jerry added.  
“Yeah, we took a little trip to Las Cruces and then we came back up through that corridor following the Rio Grande. Well, and we were in a smaller car, there was only four of us, and it was springtime, too.”  
Lars squinted through the glare from the side mirror and patted down his shirt in search of his glasses.  
“Don’t tell me you forgot your sunglasses,” I said.  
“I hope not,” he replied, concerned. I reached forward to open the glove box: a pair of mirrored sunglasses lay upon the instruction manual for the truck. He swiped them out from their hiding place and slipped them over his face. Once I shut the door of the box, I reached into my purse for mine just in time for the sun to paint the sky overhead a lighter shade of blue, and the city I knew and loved more than San Diego itself in golden light. People can say what they want to say about Albuquerque, but it and Santa Fe both will always be home to me.  
We ascended into those vast desolate mountains which always made me nervous but Dave’s truck held up all the way to the very top of the pass: we soon wound our way through Cibola National Forest, and this was where the chill of the night succumbed to heat of the day, and it began to sink upon the glass of the passenger side door.  
“Phew, another hot day in the desert,” Gina remarked, “I can feel it.”  
“At least there’s no hurricane coming our way,” Jerry pointed out.  
“True.” Right as they fell into silence, I paid more attention to the feeling of Lars right next to me. I thought about Chris sitting in the back seat right behind me, and all the way into the forest, he was silent: I remembered he talked about wanting to go back to sleep when we returned to the road. Meanwhile, I had Lars right next to me, blissfully unaware of the the thoughts running through my head.  
I kept picturing him in my arms, so soft and plush to the touch. I wanted Chris instead. How I wanted him instead of him and everyone else, but Lars was exotic, suave, and with a certain softness to him. Maybe it was his round face, or maybe it was the way he carried himself, but I wanted to touch him, protect him, and make him feel every part of my love. I pictured him being a little bit on the full and round side, even with the slender shape of his body. Leaning back against that rail on our back porch, and showing me a little stripe of that sexy skin from the uplift of his shirt.  
He inched away from me a bit to keep his skin off of me. The morning sun shone upon the roof of the truck and the road leveled out; Dave switched on the air conditioning.  
Then I focused on that image again but Lars had eaten a whole lot of dinner. My heart skipped a couple of beats and I felt a bit of a tug in the pit of my stomach. A tingling sensation piqued right in between my thighs as I thought about caressing his skin.  
Mmmm, baby boy.  
I wanted to tell Gina I was starting to feel things for Lars but I had no idea how she would react to it, much less a confession of my feelings for Chris. He had such a beautiful body, and the longer I sat there, the more I felt attracted to him.  
No, no. I mustn’t think that about him. Not Lars. No. NO.  
We cleared the forest and reached the New Mexican state line by the time the sun climbed further up into the sky behind us. Barren, sunbathed desert stretched out from either side of us. Dave drummed on the rim of the steering wheel a bit before he turned his attention to the rear view mirror.  
“Gina, there are a few albums in the back there...”  
A bit of clanking there in the back seat and then Gina spoke again.  
“Def Leppard, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Anthrax, and Kiss.”  
“Put on Tom Petty,” Jerry suggested.  
“Yeah, this ain’t a road trip without it—”  
Lars turned to me: from behind his mirrored lenses, I could see him looking right out the window and then right at me.  
“We should make a driving song,” he said to me. “A road trip song. The kind that makes a lengthy drive such as this complete.”  
“You and me or Metallica?”  
“Metallica. Unless you wanna.” He flashed me a little smirk.  
“You’re the songwriter, though.”  
“Anyone can be a writer, darling. If reading Painted in a Corner has taught me anything, it’s that anyone can do it.”  
I swore he winked at me as “Free Fallin’” came onto the truck stereo. Ben entered my mind at the sight of the first of the smooth, striped cones jutted up amongst the sagebrush. I wondered if he ever received my letter and the necklace I included with it. The piles of petrified wood and striated sand have intrigued me for years, and I started to think about the next edition of Painted in a Corner, one that focused on the Petrified Forest and part of the zine’s namesake, the Painted Desert, early in the morning, with the first rays of sunlight shining upon the steep, eroded sides of the monoliths and the prehistoric blue hills.  
“What an interesting part of the world this is,” Lars remarked.  
“Welcome to the American Southwest, my Danish friend,” Dave told him.  
We shot across the Arizona desert towards Holbrook and then Flagstaff: when we reached the latter, Chris stirred and followed it up with a groan in his throat.  
“And he is awake!” Gina proclaimed.  
“Hey, Chris, just in time!” Dave added with a glimpse into the rear view mirror. “We were just gonna stop for breakfast.”  
We pulled into the nearest parking lot and then stepped out to the morning light, with the sun baking the whole area and the breeze remaining completely still, and into the cool diner there on the edge of town. Despite the heat of the day, Gina and I both asked for coffee with our breakfast. I sat next to Chris at the table, while Jerry had taken a seat to my left. Lars was across the table from me with his arms folded over the surface and his sunglasses clasped onto the top of his shirt, right over the first sealed button. He gazed on at me with that grave look on his face. I started to wonder what he was thinking as I watched him examine the neckline of my top.  
We returned to the road soon enough, down to Phoenix, and eventually the final stretch of road before the Colorado River. At that point, the sun hung high in the sky and the glass making up the windows felt so hot to the touch that neither of us could put our arms on the windowsills, but we were bathed in the coolness of the air conditioner. Lars still nestled next to me in the front seat, but this time I kept my eye on the vast grandiosity of nothing outside of my window.  
When Dave wound the truck around one of the bends in the highway, Chris spoke again.  
“We should film ourselves the next time we have a long trip like this.”  
Jerry snickered at that.  
“Why?” Gina asked him with a chuckle.  
“Why not?” I retorted.  
“Call it Motorvision or something like that,” Chris continued, and then his voice trailed off.  
We fell back into silence for a bit longer until Dave put on his Def Leppard album for the stint of the trip away from the river gorge and the road headed down towards Casa Grande, and then turned onto Highway 8, a straight shot all the way to the coast.  
“Aside from getting a call that the release date for Rust In Peace has been pushed back, I hope nothing happens when we get back to San Diego,” Dave noted.  
“Why do you say that?” asked Lars.  
“We’re running a little warm. Like the needle of the thermostat is flirting with the space between halfway and the red. We’re not overheating but it does raise a little concern, though. When I came down this way from the Bay Area, I had no problems so figure.”  
“Right.”  
In fact, by the time we reached the California state line, Dave started to squirm in his seat from the sight of the thermostat needle.  
“I really don’t want to make a long fucking stop in Yuma,” he grumbled. “It’s too hot.”  
“Turn off the air conditioner,” Jerry suggested.  
“Again, it’s too hot!”  
“Jerry, it’s like a hundred and ten out!” Gina declared.  
“Well, we don’t really have much of a choice, though. It’s either break down in the middle of nowhere where it’s a hundred and ten or get smacked in the face with hot air for sixty miles.”  
“We’re about an hour out of El Centro, anyway,” Dave added. “Knew we should’ve stopped in Phoenix for more than fuel and drinks, though...”  
He turned the dial of the air conditioner and the cool air stopped. Almost instantaneously, the inside of the truck grew hot from the sun on the windows. Dave and I rolled down the windows, and we were greeted by that hot desert wind.  
“Yeah, we’re going to have to stop,” he shouted over the roar of the winds, “this sucks.”  
We rolled off the highway and to the nearest stretch of shade next to a park on the side of the road. Dave switched off the truck and leaned back against the seat.  
“Man, that was close,” he breathed out.  
“Yeah, for sure,” Lars added, taking off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes.  
“What do you think we should do?” asked Gina, her voice riddled with concern.  
“Sit here for a bit,” Dave told her, “let it cool off. We’re not far from San Diego, and there’s more civilization between here and there, but—if it was just me, or me, Jerry, Chris, and Lars, I would just go for it.”  
Even in the shade, the heat was unbearable, like a heavy dead weight upon us, and then I remembered this was the one thing I did not miss about living in the desert. I glanced over at Lars and the beads of sweat forming along the top of his brow. He reached into his jeans pocket and took out a piece of string to tie up his hair to keep it off of his neck. Out of the corner of my eye, Gina had taken a piece of paper to fan herself with, even though I knew that would make her feel hotter.  
After what felt like an eternity, Dave turned the ignition key again and the truck roared back to life. He peered over his sunglasses at the temperature gauge and frowned.  
“Still a little warm, but let’s get moving before we roast even by sitting here in the shade.”  
We pressed on through the middle of nowhere with the sun all but scorching the region around us all the way to El Centro followed by Ocotillo and the Jacumba Mountains, and all the while with the windows rolled down and within mere miles of the border. It always blew me away whenever I realized we were that close to Mexico.  
Meanwhile, the longer we drove on flirting with overheating, the more I flashed back on the day Mark and I came out to San Diego the first time from Albuquerque. The circumstances were the same: the sun began to hang low once we reached the mountains, and the heat began to back off, but that thermostat wanted to rise from the stress of driving for so long and so far, and now faced the daunting task of driving into a higher elevation. And Dave had a newer truck: Mark had that piece of shit that broke down twice and guzzled fuel like it was going out of style.  
At one point through the mountain pass, I felt something hold onto my hand. I glanced down at Lars’ hand hovering over the back of mine there on my thigh. It was too hot to hold hands, but I could sense it as his knuckles brushed against my skin. I tried to stay calm as we climbed higher and higher away from the vast sunburnt landscape behind us. We wound around a bend in the canyon, past Pine Valley and the little trails into the foreboding rock formations about the sides of the road. Dave shifted his weight in his seat again: I noticed his knuckles turning white from gripping onto the steering wheel.  
The valley had to be coming up here soon. It had to.  
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself over the roar of the pavement.  
“What’s up?” Jerry called from the back seat.  
“It’s getting hot. For real this time. God dammit, it would’ve taken a bit longer but we should’ve taken the other way.”  
And then the road plateaued: he took his foot off the pedal and we proceeded to coast down the pavement. Lars kept his knuckles pressed to the back of my hand. I held still there in the seat as we meandered towards Alpine and the sight of El Cajon, and beyond that, the ocean. The six of us remained in silence against the wind, which began to cool down with the incoming sea breeze, and the overheating truck: I thought of calling Chloe at the nearest gas station in the case of the truck dying but we managed to make it to La Mesa and then the house. At that point, the sun began to hang low over the ocean and the downhill drive had cooled off the truck.  
We skidded up to the curb before my mom’s house, and Dave yanked on the parking lever and killed the engine. He let out a long low whistle before he bowed his head over the edge of the steering wheel.  
“Man alive,” he said aloud.  
“Let’s get our asses inside,” Chris piped up as he unbuckled his seat belt. We filed into the house after I fetched the spare key from that rock on the porch. Dave hung out for a few minutes before he told me he had to run back over to La Mesa to tell Chloe we had made it home. Within minutes of my saying “home sweet home” and wanting to head back to my room to collapse onto my bed again, there was a knock on the door.  
“Marie?” a familiar voice floated down the hall. “Marie, it’s Mark! Open up! I know you’re home!”  
I hurried back out to the living room where Jerry, Chris, and Lars lounged on the couch, and Gina sat upright in the tall man recliner.  
“Okay, all of you duck down, hide out, do something ,” I told them all in a hushed whisper, “don’t make him know that there’s anyone else here.”


	25. The Old House

Gina and I used a bit of the money we earned from the publication to trade between my parents’ old house, Las Cruces, and traveling back to San Diego all summer long, while the rest of it we split between the two of us and put into separate accounts. Jerry and Chris both offered to take us up to Seattle at any given point in the future, and while Gina was eager to take up the offer from Jerry, I felt divided between Lars and Chris. After reading Lars’ letter back to me, I now had a decision on my hands, to take him by the hand or to follow Chris along in his path. Both men had kind to me, in particular Chris, but Lars had that edge to him, a hard edge to a soft, round boy. He was far more of an acquired taste for me, too.  
I kept thinking about him on the next trip up to the old house from Las Cruces with Gina and Dave in his truck: he had been there and over in Alamogordo for a pair of interviews and private Megadeth shows, and was about to do the same in Santa Fe. I told him that we had planned to hang out at the old house in Albuquerque with Jerry, Chris, and the DeLeo boys until we made another trip back to San Diego. I added we would hang out there before heading up to the Bay Area for the Nine Inch Nails show. It all felt so glamorous, doing all of these travels all around the Southwest, but on the other hand we had this truck with a camper shell over the bed and Gina and I both wore nothing more than plain sundresses accompanied with our sunglasses and matching black and blue slippers.  
Dave drove us the whole two hundred miles from Las Cruces through the desert, with the sun to our backs, to my parents’ old house on Hermosa Drive in Albuquerque, about a half of a mile from the airport. He had put on a plaid shirt with cut off sleeves and each of the buttons undone so as to reveal his chest; he had pushed his long fiery red hair from his face, neck, and shoulders from the late summer heat, and before taking a seat there behind the wheel, he had drank a rather large cup of black coffee.  
“So what did those people at The Rocket do with your little art zine?” he asked us at one point on the trip.  
“They told us that they were to publish a few entries for one of the June editions,” Gina replied.  
“And they did,” I added.  
“Yeah, they totally did! And we both got big chunks of change for it, too.”  
“I hope they did,” he admitted, pushing the sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I guess they’re not the only magazine on the lookout for something different. I noticed that in Alamogordo, like before my interview, I overheard a group of journalists all from Santa Fe, Dallas, and Houston talking about seeking out experiences similar to what happened to the two of you.”  
“Really?” I was stunned by that.  
“Yeah. Surprised me, too. It’s almost as if Painted in a Corner kicked something up in the world of media. That desire to seek out the new, the avant-garde, and the underbelly aside from all the oft-talked about subjects. There’s something about to happen with the music business, too, like Lars says we’ll undergo a transformative wave and then it’ll level out soon enough.”  
The three of us fell back into silence for a bit longer until we reached the outskirts of town and the long stretch of bank that was the Rio Grande. We crossed the bridge and passed the golf course and the tiny, dark Isleta Lakes. I began to regress over all of the memories of living here, including the one of leaving New Mexico last year. It all felt so surreal, leaving the old house and heading out to California.  
I told Dave the directions over to the house, that old house in the neighborhood I had spent most of my life in. We passed the airport and turned the corner: soon the house entered our view through the windshield and a part of me wanted to forget Mark and I had ever left Albuquerque. Jerry’s old car stood on the curb, which made my heart skip a beat at first.  
“What’s Jerry doing here so soon?” Gina wondered aloud.  
“I haven’t the foggiest,” I confessed. “I thought he wasn’t going to show up until at least Monday.”  
“How’d he even get here? I didn’t give him the directions.”  
“Probably the DeLeos,” Dave figured as we rolled into the driveway. He tugged on the parking lever before switching off the truck. I climbed out of the front seat in time to see Chris standing in my front doorway, with no shirt on and one boot on his foot. As I came closer, I noticed the laces had been left undone. He shielded his eyes from the hot summer sun, the light of which reflected off of his skin and brought a bright glow to the driveway and my own eyes.  
“Do you know how to work the air conditioner in here?” he asked me once I came within earshot.  
“It’s been malfunctioning and acting up since Mark and I left last year,” I explained, keeping my eyes on his face. “Yeah, I know. Our dad still lives in Albuquerque and the air conditioner doesn’t work.”  
“Lars, Jerry, and I have got the windows open in here—it’s just too damn hot otherwise.”  
I entered the house, only to be met with a blanket of hot air hanging over the foyer. I stepped into the living room, where the windows stood wide open to let in the hot breeze. Lars lay stretched out on his back on the couch with his shirt wide open so as to expose his chest and his hair tied atop his head.  
“Jesus Christ, it’s boiling in here!” Dave declared from the front door.  
“I have just been lying here,” Lars started, panting a bit, “and feeling as though if I even so much as—move my pinky finger, I sweat in droves. And not in a good way, either.”  
“Yeah, same here,” Chris joined in as he collapsed in the recliner in the corner.  
I had that nagging feeling again, the one which made me wonder if I even wanted a boyfriend in my life at that point, or if I was attracted to boys at all, or anyone for that matter. But I had such a fixation on these two fellows that I began to question that very thought. Lars had his feet up on the arm of the couch, and all of the buttons on his shirt unfastened from the heat inside of the house: I was intent on the sight of his chest and his tummy, both of them accompanied with a fine line of smooth looking dark hair. I thought about running my fingers down that hair. But then there was Chris, crossing his right leg over his left knee.  
And then Jerry entered the room with no shirt and nothing more than his boxer shorts on over his hips. Gina stepped into the next to me with her eyes wide at the sight of Jerry in front of us.  
“Like what you see here, Gina?” he asked her. She didn’t reply but I knew what she was thinking.  
“Where are Rob and Dean?” asked Dave as he wiped a bit of sweat from his brow.  
“They boogied out of here about an hour ago,” Jerry told him, “saying they had to return to San Diego for a bit.”  
“Yeah, they—they didn’t specify,” Lars groaned out, his eyelids drooping.  
“I’m gonna get you something to drink,” I offered him, heading into the kitchen for a glass of something cold. I took one of the big cups out of the cupboard when Jerry stepped into the room himself. He raised his eyebrows at me and nibbled on his bottom lip.  
“You look like you want to tell me something,” I said to him, ambling to the refrigerator for some ice cubes. He chewed on his lip some more before speaking again.  
“My worst fear is that I have an ex-girlfriend coming after me and the two of you,” he whispered. I took the glass out from underneath the mouth of the ice maker and looked at him with concern.  
“Why us?”  
“Because you’re linked to me. Gina’s with me, and—” He dropped his gaze to the floor.  
“Well,” I started, “if you must know, I’m glad we’re in Albuquerque and not in California at the moment because Gina and I’d be in a shitload of trouble right about now.”  
“Why’s that?”  
“Can’t really go anywhere in San Diego now without someone pointing us out.”  
“Can’t see how that would put you in a heap of trouble, though.”  
“Well, see, it’s—” I hesitated before pouring Lars a glass of the bit of the cranberry juice in the fridge.  
“It’s what?”  
“It’s my brother. He’s worried that if I make anymore recognition with the zine, I might be putting Gina and myself in a tough position. You know ever since Mom died, he’s been very overprotective of me lately.”  
“Maybe he’s just concerned about you.”  
“Jerry, if you met Mark, you wouldn’t be saying that,” I assured him with a lick of my lips. “Trust me.” I took the bottle of juice out of the fridge and poured some into the glass. I shut the door with my hip before returning to the sultry living room. I handed Lars the glass right as he lifted himself onto his elbows: he reached for the glass with a gentle groan in his throat. A soft glow radiated about his forehead, his cheekbones, and the side of his neck.  
We all hung out at the house until the sun finally sank down behind the petroglyphs on the edge of town, and then I headed out back to my dad’s old barbecue for a bit of mango, chipotle, and lime chicken with asparagus and corn with black beans, exactly how he made it. Chris followed me out to the porch before heading out into the grass. I thought about all of us sitting there on the back porch for a bit of dinner outside under the New Mexican stars when something sailed over the fence of the backyard and landed on the grass in front of Chris’ feet. I gaped at the sight of his staggering back to miss the brick. He glanced back at me with a look of concern upon his face.  
“God, that almost hit me right in the head!” he exclaimed.  
“What even was that?” I demanded, lighting the wood in the pit. He stooped down to pick it up and show me.  
“It’s a brick with a note attached to it,” he explained; through the fading sunlight, I made out the shape of his eyebrows knitted together as he read the sheet of paper. Jerry and Dave stepped out of the hot house onto the porch.  
“What’s it say, Chris?” I asked him as put the lid on over the barbecue to keep the flames intact.  
“We’ve got to hell out of Dodge and get our asses back to San Diego, stat.” He shoved the note into his shorts pocket. “That’s what we’ve got to do.”  
“Is it bad?” I asked him.  
“Yeah. It’s—terrifying, actually.”  
“We should take Dave’s truck, too,” Jerry added.  
“Why my truck?” Dave demanded.  
“Because your truck has air conditioning, that’s why.”  
“Okay. But what are we gonna do about your car, though?”  
“Airport,” I answered, “no one’ll get it there. But I have to confess that don’t understand what’s happening, though.”  
“That note said you might be getting sued, Marie,” he told me, “probably because of Painted in a Corner, or probably because you’re involved with us.”  
“Well, can we at least have dinner first, though?” Dave asked him.  
“I think we can. At least I hope we can. And I hope we can stay here at the house for a night.”


	26. The Zine

The opportunity came about at literally the best time possible for me and Gina: we had just seen STP over in Las Cruces and prior to then, we had met Lars, Dave, and Chris. To put it in precise terms, I could say that we stood on top of the world when those reporters came up to us after the show and asked us if we had intent on proper publishing for Painted in a Corner at any given time. The one other thing I could say was that we had very little interest in doing so, and we did: the zine was something I had done when I first arrived in California the year before out of solitude and yet the creation was the way in which I met Gina, Dean, and Rob. It was my zine and yet I had very little intent to bring it to a much wider audience, especially since Mom’s passing had taken place the mere week before the show.  
But I mulled the whole deal over for a bit until the second week of summer vacation when I decided to give Lars a ring from the house. I remembered he had given me his number in his letter back to me; Gina had run back to her dad’s house in Long Beach which in turn left me alone at the house for a day, and all the while having to deal with the quiet stillness of living alone in Mom’s wake.  
It was in the middle of the afternoon when I thought of calling Dad but I remembered he would be in Chicago all summer until further notice: I sat there on the couch staring at the wall, and wondered if I could ever find the inspiration to create things again when Lars entered my mind. I recalled Jerry’s telling me that he was the art nut, the man to turn to if and when I had a question about the arts and anything that had to do with bringing myself forward because he had done it for almost ten years at that point. He was Metallica’s spokesman after all.  
I ran back to my room for Lars’ letter to me to retrieve his phone number, and then I returned to the living room to give him a call. I brought the receiver to my ear and listened to the dial tone ring out once, twice, and then--  
“Hello?”  
“Lars?”  
“Who is this?”  
“It’s Marie.”  
“Oh, hi! I was just thinking about you.” My heart skipped a couple of beats when he said that. “I still send you all of my love for your loss, by the way.”  
“Thank you,” I told him, clearing my throat.  
“So how are you? Is everything alright?”  
“Um, I want to ask you something.”  
“Okay.”  
“You know how after the STP show in Las Cruces that Rob and Dean were raving about Painted in a Corner to some people and a couple of reporters overheard and then they asked us about it?”  
“--yes?”  
“Well one of them told me they could get us published in a magazine like The Rocket but I don’t really feel--good about it, I should say.”  
“Why is that?”  
“It was just something I did when I first moved out here to San Diego, just as a coping mechanism. It was also how I met Gina, and Dean and Rob, too, for that matter, and now here I am being offered something. And so my question is--what do you think I should do?”  
“Go for it,” he replied without even hesitating.  
“You think so?”  
“Yes. If you are being presented with that, then yes. By all means. Go and grab that ass--”  
“Huh?!” I giggled at that.  
“I mean chance! Chance! Grab that chance and go for the gold. Sorry, that--slipped out.”  
I paused, staring off to the other side of the wall. I remembered everything he had said to me in his response letter.  
“Are--you sure about that?” I asked him, reluctant. A rustling sound on his end caught my attention, followed by the shutting of a door.  
“Are you by yourself?” he asked me in a low voice.  
“I am, yes.”  
“Marie--I must tell you. I almost don’t feel right about this.”  
“Why?”  
“Well, you just barely lost your mum. You know, you went out to Las Cruces with us but never got the opportunity to grieve her until Chris and I sat with you in the room. And you are by yourself, and you came--I, I mean, you called--me with a question... for guidance... about--doing--things?”  
“Are you okay?” I asked him, leaning against the arm of the couch.  
“Yeah. I think?”  
“So what else do you think I should do?” I asked him.  
“There are a few things actually,” he replied.  
“Not like that, though.”  
“Oh. Oh, right, right, right. Er--you could write a letter to whomever is giving you the best offer at the moment. That is what I would do if you have no other options. You know, like if you can’t pick up an interview with someone, then write a query letter of sorts.”  
“Query like what you’re doing to me right now?”  
He chuckled at that until I heard a soft click on my end of the phone.  
“Oh, hang tight, I’m getting another call,” I told him; I pushed the button to switch the line. “Hello?”  
“Marie?”  
“Oh, hi, Jerry. What’s up?”  
“Ah, nothin’. Just wanted to say ‘hi’, seeing as I haven’t seen you or Gina in a couple of weeks. You know, since we hung out in the room together and whatnot.”  
“True, true. I have Lars on the other line, so if you want me to call you back, I’ll do that.”  
“Please do. And tell Lars that the next sack of Sun Chips is on me.”  
“Will do. Talk to you soon--” I pressed the button again to bring back Lars.  
“Are you still there?” I asked.  
“Never left,” he replied.  
“That was Jerry. He said the next sack of Sun Chips is on him.”  
“Oh, boy! So I was just thinking about--what you said before you swapped lines. And forgive me ahead of time if this is a bit much but after meeting you, I just--I just--”  
“Can’t help yourself?”  
“No. Not at all. I mean--‘query like what you’re doing to me right now’--and so I want to ask you--” He cleared his throat; I heard him suck on his bottom lip.  
“What are you wearing right now,” he asked in a husky voice, “if you don’t mind sharing?” I shifted my weight in my seat: I did like Lars after all but I had never paid any attention to boys while in high school even back home in New Mexico. I was venturing into unknown territory here.  
“Blue jeans with ragged hems and a white camisole that’s a little too small. You?”  
“Black Flag shirt and--” There was a brief pause, then--  
“I just unbuttoned my trousers.”  
“Why?” I teased him.  
“They are getting a little bit snug. I mean, I did eat a big lunch and breakfast earlier after all.”  
“You really do like to eat, don’t you?”  
“Always hungry, darling. I am always rooted to my stomach and the magnitude of my appetite. I am always wanting--a little bit of something on my tongue.”  
“Is that why you’re always sticking it out?” I challenged him.  
He chuckled again. “Maybe. If you would like to find out, how about the next time you and I get together, and we have--I dunno, a little time to ourselves, just by mere happenstance, we have a bit of play time with the tongues?”  
“Okay. Where do you wanna put your tongue?”  
“Oh, I can think of a few places--” I heard him groan a bit followed by some more rustling. “--but I wonder what Jerry would think, given you just got off of the other line with him.”  
“Oh, who cares what he thinks.”  
“I like you,” he said, blunt. “I want to--what’s the word--try you on.” He lowered his voice again. “I feel it. I can feel it. Do you ever see someone so--sexy and--hot, that you just want to--you know, try them on?”  
“Would you believe I haven’t.”  
“Really?” He sounded shocked.  
“Really. Even back in New Mexico, I didn’t pay too much attention to other people.”  
“Oh,” he breathed out.  
“Is everything okay?”  
“Of course. I just--I was not expecting that. But, if and when we get together, know that I will lead the way and bring right it to you. Follow my lead, Marie darling.” And yet unbeknownst to him or anyone else, I had already found my way with Jerry when we got together the first time.  
“Is it going to be hot between us?” I felt weird asking him that.  
“Very much so. Wet and wild, dare I say. But until then--” Every time he took a breath, I imagined him laying on his back, showing me his body and giving himself to me. “--I want you to do me that favor of writing to The Rocket. It is clear that you know where they are and that you have a means to get a hold of them. You must do that for yourself, my dear. For all you know, it could bring you the closure you very well need for yourself.”  
“I shall,” I vowed to him.  
“And while you are at it--and this is just by my own twisted fantasies talking here but you can utilize it for yourself if you’d like--take your top off as you are writing it. Loosen up. Feel yourself as you are writing those words on your typewriter.”  
“Will do, baby,” I whispered into the mouthpiece.  
“God--the first time we met all over again. Your ‘hey, baby, how you doin’?’ to me and then my wanting to my belly full...”  
“In the meantime, eat up some more if you wish.”  
“You read my mind.”

****************************************

I took Lars’ advice and stripped off my camisole before sitting down in front of the typewriter to write up the letter to The Rocket. My hands shook a bit as I tried to make it sound as formal as possible with each swish of a passing keystroke. I felt like I had dove headfirst into a sea of gray and all colors swirling away into even more gray. There was Lars, and then there was Jerry, then Ben whom I had no clue about, and then there was Chris; I thought about what Lars had said to me earlier in his wanting to try me on. Something about the way he said it stuck with me, too, in that velvety, lustful tone tinged with a Danish accent.  
I had reached the bottom of the body of the letter when the phone rang. Given I was by myself, I ran down the hall bare chested to answer the phone. I stood there before my dad’s recliner with my nipples poking out exposed when I picked up the receiver.  
“Hello?”  
“Marie, hi, it’s Jerry.”  
“Oh, hi!” I declared, feeling my face grow warm. “Er, forgive me, I got sidetracked with something important.”  
“Oh, no, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay. What you have to do comes first. Is this a bad time, though?”  
“Oh, no, not at all. I wrote a letter to The Rocket to get the zine properly published and put before a wide range of eyes.”  
“Y-You are?” he stammered.  
“Yes. Is there something wrong?”  
“I just walked by a newsstand just now and I saw Painted in a Corner featured on the cover of that exact magazine.” My mouth dropped open.  
“Holy shit, are you serious?” I demanded.  
“Dead serious. You might wanna--revise your letter a bit so you and Gina get the rights back. You know, get like royalties and whatnot. Heard some people calling you guys whores, too.”  
“What for?”  
“No idea. Could be you were both dressed a little too nice when we saw STP and then when we were in Vegas, but I can’t say.”  
“It was like a hundred degrees out, though. In both places.”  
“Right! I stood up for you both, though. There’s no way I’m going to let that shit fly. Although I will concede that you and Gina--did look pretty hot with your camis and your shorts.”  
I snickered at the gesture as I pressed my free hand to my hip and glanced down at my bare breasts: the coolness of the house made the nipples poke out a little bit.  
“You know I’m topless right now,” I told him.  
“Ohhhhh, baby. Remember our night together?”  
“How could I forget?”  
“Gina left the room and it was just you and me.”  
There was a noise behind him, followed by someone speaking. He then replied with “yeah, okay, sure.”  
“I’m on a payphone right now,” he confessed with a sigh, “I’ve gotta bail.”  
“Shit. Well, thank you for telling me that, though. I’ll revise the letter and send it off right away. Tomorrow’s Monday, so it’ll be the first thing up there.”


	27. The Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Would you like an Amos and Andy or Martin and Lewis?”  
> -Steve Buscemi in Pulp Fiction

Lars sat next to me on the edge of the bed while Rob and Dean were across from us at the table after I hung up the phone with Mark in the hotel room there in Las Cruces. He had put his arm around me to comfort me but all I felt like doing was throwing myself down onto the floor and bawling right into my hands.  
I thought everything in existence had tilted over onto its side and let me fall out onto the edge of nothing. I couldn’t believe it: while we were at the show, Mom had taken a fall off of the porch, from off of that ramp he had made for her, and then he took her to the hospital, but her condition simply deteriorated from thereafter.  
I brushed away tears as I bowed my head. Lars stroked my shoulder as he held me closer to his body.  
“If there’s anything I can do or get for you, please tell me,” he whispered to me, “I will be more than happy to help you.”  
“Thank you,” I sniffled.  
“Yeah, we’ll help you, too,” said Rob.  
“By the way, where’s Gina?” asked Dean.  
“I think she’s outside with Jerry,” Lars answered, never letting go of me, “talking about patches and whatnot.”  
“I think Chris is, too,” I added, brushing a tear from my eye. My bottom lip quivered which in turn coaxed more hot tears out of my eyes. I buried my face in Lars’ shoulder, that is until he turned around there on the edge of the bed to hold me close to him. I wanted Chris in the room to help comfort me but Lars was all I had at the moment.  
His hand caressed the back of my head, then through my hair. He gently rocked me as he held me so close to his warm chest: I felt a part of his hair sweep over my shoulder and part of my upper back as if blanketing me. It was a warm, pleasant spring day but the room felt cold and icy. My world was shattered and turned upside down, but all I had was this young Danish man and his warmth and softness.  
Dean whispered something to Rob, and then silence filled the room. The door opened, but I never lifted my head to see who came inside, that is until I heard a voice.  
“What--are you doing?” asked Chris.  
“Marie’s mom died,” Dean replied in a low voice.  
“Ohhh, shit!” Chris declared.  
“What? What?! Marie’s mom died?” Gina shouted from outside. I lifted my head from Lars’ chest right as she rushed into the room with her arms wide open. She embraced the both of us which only brought more tears out of me.  
“God--” I heard Chris say aloud from the door.  
I could hardly pay attention to anything else for the rest of the day after those twenty minutes. I lay on my back there on the bed with the pillow right underneath my head and stared up at the ceiling as Chris, Jerry, and Gina stepped in and out of the room: I had tuned out their voices at one point and thus, I paid no attention to what they were doing or what they planned for that afternoon. Dean and Rob had left the room at some point to tend to a press conference with Scott and Eric.  
When the sunlight dimmed through the room window, the door opened again, letting in a whoosh of warm afternoon air, and then Lars breezed into the room. I picked up the smell of milkshakes and French fries as he came closer to me. I thought about my head pressed against his chest, and I thought I had had my heart set on Chris at first but Lars was the one who comforted me.  
I lifted my head as he took off his arrowhead necklace and gave his long hair a toss. I then pushed myself onto my elbows to take a better look at his slender but built body: I gazed into the reflection of the mirror before him, into those deep eyes and that full face, and cleared my throat.  
“Lars,” I called to him. He spun around to look at me with his eyebrows raised.  
“Yes?”  
“You know how you said you’d anything for me?” I asked him.  
“Yes?” I nibbled on my lip as I thought back to what I had in mind and then I waved a hand before my face.  
“Nah.”  
“Oh, come now--” he coaxed me in a gentle voice. He ambled around the side of the bed and took a seat next to my hip. “Tell me.”  
I stared at his full face and then I dropped my gaze to his chest, and then his waist. I thought about his gentleness and the fact he held me after that phone call. I nibbled on my lip again as I kept my eyes fixed on the belt of his jeans: he had such a svelte slim waist but he felt so soft to the touch, as if he had some extra weight on his body. The perfect cuddler.  
“Can I--touch you?” my voice squeaked as the words left my mouth.  
“Touch me?” He lowered one eyebrow at that.  
“I want to touch you. And run my fingers through your hair. I want to feel you against my body again.”  
“Oh--Oh, my--” He shifted his weight and leaned back away from me as if he was uncomfortable.  
“Is--Is there something wrong?”  
“No, no. It’s just--that is not what I was expecting.”  
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, but he clasped a hand onto my shoulder.  
“Hey, hey,” he said in a hushed voice. I lowered my gaze from the ceiling to his deep set, hypnotic eyes: his cherry lips pouted at the sight of mine. For a split second, I believed he would kiss me but he only kept his face close to mine.  
“Don’t take that the wrong way,” he pleaded, “please. Don’t ever--take that the wrong way. Especially with me. I love being touched and held and cuddled. In fact, you wanna know something?”  
I nodded my head and sniffled. He glanced about the room to make sure we were the sole people in there. When I realized no one eavesdropped on us, I listened to him with intent as he bowed his head with a further pout of the lips.  
“I like having my stomach touched more than anything,” he whispered.  
“Y-You do?” I sputtered, feeling my eyes burn with tears.  
“Do you remember how hungry I was last night?”  
“Yeah.” And then it dawned on me. “Oh--”  
“Yeah, I would offer to--take you out to get something eat but--” He leaned back and gave his belly a little pat. “I just already ate about half my weight in an early dinner.”  
“I was just going to say you smell like Bob’s Big Boy,” I remarked; I resisted the urge to add “big boy” to the end of that. There was a click of the lock on the outside of the door and Gina swung it open: she had her purse over her shoulder and a pair of chocolate milkshakes cradled in one arm.  
“Hey, Lars,” she greeted him as she closed the door with her hip and removed her sunglasses with her free hand.  
“Hi--I assume those are for you and her,” he noted, leaning back onto his hands to show the both of us his chest.  
“Yeah, I thought a chocolate shake would cheer her up,” she answered, setting down the shakes on the table and then reaching into her purse for her glasses. “Unless you’d like something, in any which case I’ll bitch slap Jerry for a little something to nosh on for yourself.”  
“Nah, I ate like half of Roskilde just now--” There was something incredibly tempting about Lars touching the middle of his body with an open hand.  
“By the way, Chris wants to talk to you about something,” she added, gesturing behind her to the door.  
“Me?” he asked, pointing at himself. “Oh--” He climbed to his feet and darted out of the room to the opened corridor outside of the door. Gina took his seat there on the side of the bed, right there next to my hip. She handed me the milkshake as I sat upright and leaned back against the refurbished headboard.  
“I hope we can do something about Painted in a Corner,” she confessed in a low voice.  
“Tell me about it,” I said, grim; I thought about those reporters we had encountered at the STP show as well. “I don’t really feel like doing anything right now. Much less anything pertaining to that.”


	28. The Third Letter

It was another warm late spring day there in Las Cruces as Gina and I climbed out of Jerry’s car and made our way to the front lobby so as to check into our room. The hotel wasn’t much with its long low two story ranch style buildings and clean rooms with the dark carpet: it was just enough for the two of us and Chris and Jerry themselves if they wished to join us that evening. I was in a daze in the wake of what had happened back there at the STP show: there were actually people who wanted to have Painted in a Corner presented before a larger crowd of souls, people who wanted us to have a larger voice and an even larger audience and impact on the world of publishing itself. Indeed, I felt so eager by the whole prospect of it that my hand shook as I inserted the key card into the slot.  
The room itself had a pair of twin beds with smooth dark bedspreads over the top and a plush looking dark green carpet right underneath our feet. I set down my things and claimed the bed near the inside wall, which meant Gina would take the one closest to the bathroom and furthest away from the door. No sooner had Jerry taken a seat at the table underneath the vanity mirror on the side of the room when a knock on the door caught our attention.  
“That’s probably Lars,” he told us, climbing to his feet once again. He flung open the door and there stood Lars with his long smooth brown hair pushed back from his shoulder and his chest, a pair of mirrored sunglasses atop his round full face, and a plain white shirt: I eyed the bottom hem of the shirt as it hugged his waist and his hips.  
“What are you guys doing?” he asked us, taking off his sunglasses. “I thought we were going to meet up Rob and Dean at that one place not too far from here?”  
“Down in Mesilla?” Gina followed along with him.  
“Yeah.”  
“Soon,” she assured him. “Just let us get settled in first.”  
“Oh, Marie!” Lars exclaimed with a big sweet smile on his face pointed at me.  
“Yes?”  
“I have something for you--I have been meaning to send you this, but I never found the opportunity to do so.” He stepped into the room, and then reached into his back jeans pocket for something, and whipped out a clean white envelope. He handed me the envelope with that smile never fading, and his cheekbones nice and full with warmth from exposure to the late morning. Jerry closed the door behind him, and Gina ambled across the room to turn on the air conditioner, which left the two of us to have a moment alone there on the edge of the bed.  
I opened the envelope and revealed his short, but nevertheless sweet response letter to me.

“Marie--  
I am more than flattered and honored to have your art upon my radar. You know I am an art connoisseur, always on the lookout for new up and coming artists and the masters of the tools of trade. And therefore, to see anything you have to share with me, for me, is like the equivalent of someone sharing a demo tape with me. I am nervous, but I have faith in you, darling.  
You said you moved out from New Mexico to California? Perhaps there can be a way we can meet up with each other on a certain basis--I would have to check the times and tour dates for us (we have a lengthy tour coming up at the end of this year)--but know that I am more than honored to meet you, especially in the wake of reading on your history.  
I hope you and your brother can find peace and solace in a strange place: I am no stranger to that very feeling myself. I pray that you can find your own James Hetfield there in San Diego.  
Al min kærlighed,  
Lars.”

I lowered the letter as I turned my head to look at him. I patted the side of his face before I put my arms around him. I set my chin on his shoulder so I could watch Gina fiddle with the thermostat to adjust the temperature there in the room.  
“I really meant that, too,” he whispered into my ear, “I hope you can find your own James Hetfield,”  
“I think I did,” I confessed to him as I never took my eyes off of her.

*********************

We met up with Rob and Dean at one of the cafes there in the plaza in Mesilla, at the southern end of town for brunch. We basically went there just to celebrate the attention Gina and I had been getting as of late for our zine. It all felt like a dream, to witness all of this happening right before our eyes. These good things would truly be happening for the two of us, and Jerry would be with us every step of the way--perhaps Lars or Chris if either one of them made their move on me.  
Upon returning to the hotel, the clerk at the front desk told me I had a call waiting for me there in the room. Rob and Dean followed the three of us into the room; I picked up the receiver from the phone there on the side of the bed.  
“Hello?”  
“Marie?”  
“Oh, Mark. What’s up?”  
The words seemed to slice through me like a knife. I gasped, and I held the phone down from my mouth and my ear to keep myself from weeping into the mouthpiece. I cupped a hand to my mouth to keep myself from screaming, or barfing.  
“What’s the matter?” Rob demanded, his eyes wide with concern.  
“My mom died.” Dean gasped and Lars hurried towards me from the doorway. I thanked Mark before hanging up the phone.


	29. The Flask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I do crave the ocean. Salt. Heavy air. Sound. White waves. Sweeping tides against a forgiving shoreline under a sky that dances with its soft mirror below.”  
> -Victoria Erickson

I opened up that old notebook I had had in my book bag from school. All of those old thoughts I experienced and wrote down all started to return to me. The first page had those names we had given each other when I had initially shared Painted in a Corner with Gina. I ran my fingers over the inked letters: it felt so long ago but so recent at the same time.  
I’m still Medusa. Gina is still Persephone.  
All of these things happened so quickly that it was refreshing to return to those old thoughts, and what better place than in Las Vegas. Mrs. Hudson wasn’t too far from here: I could hitch a ride with Chris and he could take me to see her and ask her about things happening.  
“Marie, Lars is here!” Gina called from the front of the hotel room. My heart skipped several beats as I flung the journal closed and slipped it back into my book bag. I ran a hand through my hair because I wanted to look good for him again. I fetched up a sigh before heading out of the tiny room and into the front part of the hotel room.  
His smooth long hair draped over his shoulders to emphasize the roundness of his face; he wore the same Anthrax shirt he had worn when we met each other, but the bottom hem hugged his slim waist a little bit more than I had remembered. His eyes were bright and glassy, and his skin smooth as porcelain. He raised his thick eyebrows at me when I entered the room.  
“Marcia, right?” he asked me as he came closer to me.  
“Marie,” I corrected him.  
“Marie, that was it! Anyways--how are you, darling?” His little lips on my face resembled to that of a doll.  
“I’m well. Glad to be back in New Mexico, and with the little Danish gentleman at that.”  
He showed me a little smile, complete with his cheekbones growing round and full like little ripe apples. He dropped his gaze down to the floor before speaking again.  
“So how did--that interview go?” he asked me in a low voice, looking up at me again.  
“What, with the reporters?”  
“Yeah.”  
“It got me thinking.”  
“Thinking? Like how?”  
“That maybe... Gina and I are on our way to something huge.”  
He turned his head to the tiny kitchenette next to us and then he peered into the living room behind me.  
“Speaking of Gina, where is she?” he wondered aloud.  
“I don’t really know,” I confessed. “It’s like she told me you were here and then she just... left.”  
Lars licked his lips once he returned his attention to me. He inched closer to me, and his slender body lingered right before my chest.  
“I have this...” He brought a hand to the bottom part of his shirt. “--peculiar feeling in my stomach right now. It’s like--er--that weird fluttery feeling you get whenever you feel excited about something.”  
“Really? Why would you feel like that?”  
“Because--when we first met, I have to admit I was little--intimidated by you.”  
“Why would you feel intimidated by me?”  
“Because I--I often think I’m ugly, like there is no way any girl would ever find my ass attractive.”  
“I think you’re kinda cute, actually,” I pointed out to him.  
“Just kind of?”  
“Okay, you’re very cute. I wanna just like... touch your face. Like--pinch your little cheeks.”  
A soft blush bloomed in his face and he raised his shoulders up to his ears.  
“Can I tell you something?” he lowered his voice to a near whisper.  
“Yeah, sure.”  
He licked his lips again and shifted his weight right on the spot.  
“I can think of... a few things I would like to do to you,” he confessed, bringing his gaze back up to me.  
“Like what?”  
He parted his lips to show me his running his tongue before the front of his teeth. He never lifted his gaze from me as he brought his face closer to me: he was about to kiss me, and thus I braced myself for it. The thought of a potential affair between me and Chris was something I had bore in mind before, but one between me and Lars... I closed my eyes when the door of the hotel room flung open. I turned my head to see Jerry and Gina stepping inside with bags of food in hand.  
“Dinner’s here,” Lars told me.  
“Courtesy of Chris,” Jerry declared. The four of us took a seat on the couch and had our dinner; Gina sat in between Jerry and me while Lars took the arm next to her.  
“We have that brunch tomorrow, don’t we?” I asked Jerry.  
“That’s right, yeah! With the DeLeo boys. Down in Las Cruces, which means we have to leave early tomorrow morning to meet up with them. The room down there isn’t as nice as the one here, but it’s something, though.”  
I caught a glimpse of Lars staring at me from the arm of the couch before Gina reached forward for her drink.  
“Oh, yeah, Gina, Marie,” Jerry started.  
“Yes?” we said in unison. He stood to his feet and headed over to his overnight bag on the table on the other side of the room. He took something out of the front pocket and doubled back to us, and returned to his seat in between us on the couch.  
“Remember what we talked about on the first trip down there? How you ladies wanted to try a little alky-hol just to see what it’s like?”  
“I remember,” I admitted. Jerry handed me the flask, and while I was reluctant at first, I held onto it with my free hand. It almost felt as though I held a sacred piece of ancient art: the silvery metal was smooth and liquid inside of my hand. I caught a whiff of the alcohol inside of there, and it seared my nose. But I had already taken it from him. I tipped the flask back towards my mouth for a sip. The alcohol burned the back of my mouth and the very taste of the booze inside left the top of my tongue so dried and parched that I nearly gagged.  
But I swallowed as Jerry stood to his feet so I could hand it over to Gina. She took a sip, followed by another and another, and I swore she drank down half of the flask.  
“Yeah, there you go--yeah!” Jerry exclaimed. Gina lay back on the couch with the flask resting upon her chest; Lars climbed off with his soda in hand to give her more room.  
I wanted another sip, especially since it was just us here with Jerry and Lars in the hotel room. I took the flask out of Gina’s hand and took another sip. Soon, this warmth surged up out of my stomach and into the pit of my chest, and all down my arms. It seemed a bit too much for me as I leaned against Gina’s shoulder and closed my eyes.  
I had dozed off within seconds: I had no idea about her, but I fell asleep fast and hard.  
I awoke to the sound of Jerry shuffling about the room. My eyes almost felt glued shut from tears and my lips were dried together to form a seal, and the back of my mouth so parched and dry, I would have to drink a whole gallon of water just to heal the dryness.  
“Marie--” Gina sputtered. I stirred but couldn’t open my eyes.  
“Marie--shit!”  
I pried my lips open and gasped for air. I reached to my eyes to wipe out whatever sealed them closed.  
“Gah--wha?” I could hardly speak in a coherent manner.  
“Come on, come on! We’ve gotta go!”  
“Go where?” I stammered, my voice breaking.  
“Las Cruces. We’ve gotta meet up with Rob and Dean, remember? Come on, it’s a four hour drive and we don’t really have time to fuck around, either.”


	30. The Man in Black

He was the kind of guy I had dreamed of in the past, where I would lay flat on my back on the bed at my parents’ house in New Mexico and daydream on the ceiling tiles. Granted, I had written to him before, but I never believed we would cross paths at any given moment. I had my doubts before, on how I had no clue if I wanted a boyfriend or a girlfriend or anyone, but when Chris entered the picture, it felt as though he had performed some kind of magic on his part. I was reminded of the fact I have a vagina, something that Ben had done with me before, but he came across more as like a country boy riding like Hermes with his scrolls tucked under his arm and a devilish smirk on his face, coming straight out from the dried deserts of El Paso, whereas Chris crawled out from underneath the wilted, sopping wet base of Olympus to behold his lightning.  
We met when Gina, Jerry, Lars, and I flew out to Las Vegas—the town northeast of Albuquerque and east of Santa Fe, not the big hole splattered in the corner of Nevada, neither place I had been to in so long—to meet up with Dave and also Chris. It was right after we saw STP down in Las Cruces and we had that interview with all of those reporters, and the whole entire time I struggled to cover my ass because I slept with Jerry, but I dared not let any of the members of the press know that he and Gina were a couple. We had returned to San Diego for not even a week when Dave called us from his place over in La Mesa to tell us Chris wanted to meet us, and in what better place than in my home state.  
“Soundgarden is touring over in the Southwest right now,” he explained, “Chris offered to meet up with you guys there in Vegas. Megadeth will be out there soon, so we all can meet up together.”  
Gina and I had midterms at the time, and thus, on that early Friday afternoon following our last class, Jerry picked her up in Chula Vista and then swing by my mom’s place to fetch me, and then we all drove to the airport together to fly out to Santa Fe for the weekend. The sole drawback was Jerry had to find another room for us since this came up so soon. Once we landed in New Mexico, we met up with Dave in his truck and rode the sixty miles to the western side of Las Vegas. The other alternative was to stay at the house alone since Mark had Mom with him for the next two weeks. Something about him feeling paranoid about me growing too famous and turning my backs on them, which neither I nor Gina could understand...  
Because night was about to fall over New Mexico soon by the time we touched down on the tarmac, I was even more eager to meet up with Dave, and then Chris. Apparently Lars was going to be with him, and thus I was eager to meet him again after seeing him after the show down in Las Cruces.  
I had forgotten about the beauty that makes up the sunsets here, with the waning sunlight washing over the backs of the mountains and the Pecos Forest, and bathing the entirety of Old Town in amber and golden light before vanishing into the darkness. We had the windows rolled down in Dave’s truck all the way along the highway headed for Las Vegas so we could feel the warm evening air upon our faces.  
After an hour, I recognized the pillars of steam billowing up from the Hot Springs into the violet sky, and then I recognized the low buildings making up Agua Zarca, followed by the signs for the cutoff going up to Montezuma. I had a whole stream of memories flowing through my mind right as we turned off of the highway and headed towards the Plaza where Dave told us we would meet up with Chris and Lars.  
I remembered the tight woven tapestry of all of the little coffeehouses and boutiques about the Plaza, all of the lights switching onto a low light for the incoming night. Before I could better refresh my memory given I hadn’t been here since I was in middle school, Dave made an abrupt turn onto Grand Avenue and headed to this place called Hillcrest. We bounded into the parking lot and took the first spot near the porch and the front door. The bright neon lights in the front window shone over the porch in electric blue and pink light, and there seated at the table near the steps, were the two men of the hour.  
Lars leaned over an hourglass shaped frosty glass filled with chocolate milkshake so as to keep the straw tucked in his mouth. He kept his arms folded over the top of the table which made his chest appear bigger than normal. He had set his mirrored sunglasses atop his head, and so the neon light made his deep set eyes appear even deeper. I could tell he was enjoying his milkshake, and I flashed back on the amount of food he had gorged on when we first met. Quite the hungry boy, making where and when he was going to find something to eat a big priority in his life. It was almost at random when I thought about my last journal entry before thing started to pick up for us: I made a mental note to have a look at it, after not doing so in months no less, once we checked into the hotel room.  
Meanwhile Chris himself was the proverbial man in black: wearing dark jean shorts lined with silvery duct tape on the hems, heavy looking shiny black boots, and a black button down shirt with the top three buttons undone. His long wavy dark hair seemed to drift behind him in spite of the light breeze all around us. He knitted his eyebrows at me in particular at first, and then his face lit up.  
“Marie, right?” he asked as part of his greeting to me.  
“Yes,” I replied, my voice trembling. He extended his hand for me to take and we shook there: he did the same for Gina.  
Lars let go of the straw and leaned back against the back of the chair with his hands on his stomach.  
“Had enough?” Dave cracked as he ascended the steps of the porch; Jerry passed him to enter the restaurant, perhaps to use the phone to find the nearest hotel for us.  
“That is an understatement, man,” he confessed, bringing a hand to his mouth.  
“I was wondering when you’d have enough,” Chris joked. “That was your second one, too.”  
“I haven’t had dinner yet, either. Bloody hell—that waitress wasn’t kidding when she said they’ll knock you off of your feet.”  
A belly full of ice cream and hadn’t had anything of substance in who knows how long; there was something unduly precious about that.  
“I need a glass of water,” he added, climbing to his feet and almost losing his balance; Dave put a hand on him to steady him.  
“Easy there, big fella,” he cautioned him, leading him to the heavy front door of the restaurant. Chris then turned to Gina and me, and he beckoned for us to have a seat in the wiry chairs before him. I sat down next to him, and I caught a whiff of his soft, almost soapy cologne.  
“So how are you?” he asked us in a low voice.  
“Excited,” Gina confessed.  
“Oh, yeah, after you had that interview down in—Las Cruces, was it?”  
“Yeah, a place that’s hella close to my heart, too,” I added.  
“Oh really?” He seemed surprised by that.  
“Yeah, I was born in Albuquerque and I remember growing up, my parents and I would often drive down there on road trips. We also would go to Santa Fe on a regular basis, too.”  
“Oh, that’s so cool. What about you?” He turned to Gina, who had taken Lars’ seat.  
“I’m originally from New Orleans, now based in Long Beach,” she replied.  
“And how’d you ladies wind up in a place like San Diego?”  
“School,” said Gina.  
“Definitely school,” I added, “but I went there because my mom’s disabled and she needed my brother and me to take care of her.”  
He gasped and brought a hand to his mouth.  
“I’m so sorry,” he sympathized.  
“Add to this, she and my dad are divorced so we had to bail on everything and everyone we knew back in Albuquerque just to go there. Lucky for me, I met Gina, and then Rob and Dean.”  
“What about your brother?”  
“Mark and I barely talk anymore, mainly because he began a life of his own when we moved out there, and partially because he went on kind of a power trip shortly thereafter.”  
“Yeah, we met basically because we both come from dysfunctional families and we’re the new kids,” Gina joined in. “My mom died two years ago back in New Orleans after she and my dad split, and I have a stepmother who’s hellbent on getting rid of me.”  
“And that’s how you met Jerry?” he followed along.  
“Pretty much, yeah.”  
Jerry himself stepped out of the restaurant with a piece of paper in hand. He tossed his hair back from his neck before speaking.  
“I found a nice place about two blocks from here,” he told us, “so Dave lent me his keys and we can drive there.”  
“What’s Dave gonna do?” I asked him.  
“He’s getting a milkshake. Once we’re checked into our room, I’ll come back here to get Lars and Chris, and the three of us’ll get dinner.”  
“Alright, we’ll talk to you later, Chris,” I told him, and he patted my hand before I stood to my feet. We made our way back to the truck, and once we had buckled in, Gina piped up.  
“By the way, when’s Clash of the Titans again?”  
“The sixteenth,” said Jerry, inserting the key into the ignition,”goes all the way to the middle of July, too, which means the two of you will be alone for a few months. But Dave, me, the boys from Anthrax, and the dudes from Slayer are all getting big fat checks in the mail soon, so I’ll lend you ladies some money so you can do stuff.”  
“Yeah, Gina, you’ll be staying with me if push comes to shove,” I assured her, and then Jerry fired up the truck, and we headed to the little, but classy hotel in question. The room Jerry had gotten for us was one of those deluxe rooms with a small kitchen, a living room with a small comfy looking couch, and two rooms, both of them with twin beds and refurbished everything.  
“Here’s where we’ll be staying for the night,” he announced once we stepped inside of the room.  
“Holy shit,” Gina blurted out.  
“Yeah, this is fancy, Jerry,” I added, walking down the corridor to the first room on the right side. I pushed open the door and turned on the overhead light on the ceiling. I set down my luggage and then I remembered what I had in mind. I heard Gina and Jerry talking in the next room, but I paid no attention as I took out the journal from the bottom of my overnight bag, and took a seat on the edge of the bed with it in my lap.


	31. The Hotel in Vegas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All the good girls go to hell,  
> 'Cause even God herself has enemies,  
> And once the water starts to rise,  
> And heaven's out of sight,  
> She'll want the devil on her team.”  
> -Billie Eilish, “all the good girls go to hell”

I had just set down my luggage on the floor of the living room and switched on the lamp next to the couch when Gina and Jerry stumbled in behind me. He took a seat on the couch next to me while she yanked back one of the chairs in the kitchen. Finally home again. I could still hear those reporters asking me all of those questions and I could still hear Lars’ voice echoing through my brain. There was something about him that stayed with me, like a persistent itch I had nagging at the base of my spine, or an apparition that seduced me into the shadows with his Nordic darkness. But we were back home in Albuquerque, at least for the time being.  
“I completely forgot how long that drive is,” I confessed, running my fingers through my hair.  
“This time of night especially,” he added, leaning back against the couch and clearing his throat. “But now I have a question.”  
“What’s that?” asked Gina as she slouched in the kitchen chair.  
“Where are we all gonna sleep?”  
“Well, I have my room,” I pointed out. “The two of you can take my parents’ room if you’d like. And then we can hang out here until Dave calls us... I’m thinking back in San Diego since he’s from La Mesa and I didn’t give him the number to this house.”  
“We’d have to fly back to San Diego, though,” she pointed out. “Especially the two of us.”  
“Dave has to fly back, too,” said Jerry.  
“And it’s okay—you and I have another couple of days off for spring break before we return to school. We’ll catch the next flight tomorrow. And Dave has to get his ass back home, too.”  
Then I remembered.  
“You also still have your jacket here... don’t you?” I asked her.  
She paused for a moment and then gave her lips a lick, which in turn made me feel thirsty.  
“I think so? I’m drawing a blank on where I stashed it, though.” She rubbed her eye with the inside of her fist. “I’m too tired to think right at the moment.”  
“I hear you,” I added, yawning. Without another word, Gina stood to her feet and headed down the dark hall to my parents’ old room. I never understood why Dad never sold this house when he and Mom split up, but I guessed it made sense to keep it given Mark and I still had some of our things here. I turned to Jerry right as he spread his legs and showed me the crotch of his jeans and the interior of his thighs.  
“I like the way you handled those news people earlier,” he complimented; I flashed back on my encounter with Lars behind the back wall of the venue, which I had had right after I kissed Jerry. It still wasn’t over between the two of us, and I still wanted him. But I shrugged at the notion.  
“I did my best,” I admitted.  
“Just like the way you handled me the first time you and I were alone.”  
“Shhhh—Gina is five feet away from us,” I whispered.  
“And? She’s not gonna know what went down between us. Or how you went down on me.”  
I pressed my hands to my hips.  
“You know if it was just you and me here, I would strip for you so fast.”  
“You should do it right now, doll,” he cracked, a smirk crossing his face. “You know—take off your camisole and your shorts and just shake your ass right over my thighs and my dick right now.”  
“I might ride your cock but I ain’t giving you a dance, though,” I scoffed.  
“Dance?” Gina’s voice nearly sent me flying forward into the living room window. I spun around to see her cleaning one of the lenses of her glasses with the hem of her Stone Temple Pilots shirt: she had already taken off her shorts and exposed her bare legs and feet to us.  
“Yeah, you know, dancing in the dark. Dance like no one’s watching you. It’s a little late for that, but yeah.”  
She raised an eyebrow at me.  
“Oookay...” She cracked me a smile before she turned her attention to Jerry right behind me. “Come on, babe. Let’s get into that big bed.”  
“I am up for a big bed,” he declared, putting his hands on his knees and climbing to his feet. She doubled back into the room; as he walked past me, he looked over his shoulder at me.  
“Dream of me,” he whispered in an airy voice before disappearing into the darkness. I sighed, and then turned around to open the window to let in the breeze. I had no idea where I was headed with Jerry given that Lars had entered the picture, and now Chris was about to enter the fold soon. Then there stood Gina, right in between us, but I grimaced at the thought of that. She was my friend, not an obstacle. But there was no denying my feelings for him, even as the cool night breeze flowing through the window made my nipples point and stand on end.  
I pictured Jerry still sitting there on the couch with his legs wide open and his blond hair tied back from his face and the back of his neck to alleviate the pressure of the heat, the heat that wound its way through me. I closed my eyes and lifted up the bottom of my camisole to expose my belly to the night air. It was two o’clock in the morning: all of the neighbors, including Mrs. Hudson, had all gone to bed for the night; I kept lifting the bottom hem until I reached the bottom of my rib cage. I slipped my other hand up to my chest to touch myself.  
Jerry remained firmly etched in mind as I ran my fingertips over the edge of my left nipple. The very sensation sent shivers across my skin and down past my waist. I moved to the right one and my heart started to pound inside of my chest. I breathed harder with each of my own caresses.  
“Yes—yes—” I sputtered. “—mmm, yes. That’s...” I gasped when I felt that familiar damp sensation right between my legs. It just wasn’t the same without his fingers. I sighed, and dropped my hand, and tugged my camisole back down to my waist. I wheeled around to head back to my room for the night: but I stripped off my clothes before climbing into bed as there was no way I was about to sleep with them on. I also opened the window to keep the feeling intact by the time I woke up.  
I awoke the next morning to golden sunlight flooding through my bedroom window and to the sound of Jerry and Gina’s voices floating from down the hall. I pushed back the blanket, and climbed out of bed, and spotted my clothes atop my dresser. So what if they were a day old; I ambled down the hall and smelled coffee once I came into the kitchen.  
“Oh, there she is,” he pointed me out. Gina turned around in the chair closest to me.  
“‘Morning, sis! We were just discussing our meeting with Mr. Cornell.”  
“He’s gonna be meeting us on the first, and later in the day, over in Las Vegas,” he explained, picking up his coffee mug for a sip. “And I figure we could just fly here to Alba-cuckoo, camp out here, and then drive there.”  
“But if Chris wants to meet us there at such a later time,” I followed along, rounding the back of Gina’s chair so I stood in between both of them, “we can’t really stay at my parents’ house because there really isn’t anything to do there unless you wanna eat lunch at Mrs. Hudson’s place down the street.”  
“I’ll get us a hotel room there... you know, in Vegas,” he assured me. “That is, if I can find one around then. Right after spring break and before Labor Day, it’s tough. But I’ll give it a try when the time comes, though.”  
“I thought we were flying back to Albuquerque?” Gina raised an eyebrow.  
“Yeah, we are,” I said, and then I started to laugh. “Wait a minute, did you think he was talking about Las Vegas, Nevada?”  
“I was talking Las Vegas out near Santa Fe, babe,” he corrected. “We’re probably going to have to go out to the other one at some point because Lars and the DeLeos have some unfinished business out there.”  
“Oh, what about?” I inquiringly asked as I headed to the cupboard for a clean mug.  
“—can’t really say,” he confessed.


	32. The White Album

It would be about three hours before we returned home to Las Cruces, and I had no time to mess around with anymore questions about anything, be it the fact I slept with Jerry, or made out with Lars, or anything pertaining to Painted in a Corner. We had had already been there at the venue long enough, and I just wanted to return to my parents’ house and crawl under the covers of my bed before Gina and I returned to San Diego for school again. Lucky for me, we had not checked into a room and thus we needn’t bother with check out time. Everything was a whirlwind, a flash, and a blur right before my eyes: it was all happening so fast that I could hardly contain my excitement.  
I took my suitcase out of the overhead compartment on the bus and slung it over my shoulder. As I sidestepped my way towards the folded doors, I could still feel Lars’ tongue on the inside of my teeth. His hands had touched me in the softest way possible: I wanted him to strip off my top and get down right there on the floor with me, but those press people stampeded towards us faster than a cluster of marathon runners. I wondered about one of them, that portly guy with the long frizzy black hair past his shoulders and the black Ministry shirt, how he asked Lars about the Clash of the Titans tour coming up in about a month and their promotion of the Black Album on top of everything else. I knew Metallica had their priorities in another place, and that tour was not one of them.  
I almost fell out of the bus onto the warm concrete, but I caught myself on the railing next to my left. I stepped out into the night with the suitcase in hand and my purse over my shoulder, and glanced around for either Rob or Dean, or better yet Jerry.  
“Marie!”  
I peered straight ahead to the back door of the venue, and Gina running out of that back corridor.  
“Hey! Where’s Jerry?”  
“He’s around front waiting for us. Come on! Come on!” I followed her down the sidewalk to the far corner and the alley heading to the main street: the soles of our Chucks echoed over the pavement as we broke out to a jog. I adjusted the strap of my purse once we turned the corner, and almost dropped my suitcase, but I saved it once I recognized the fender of Jerry’s car peeking out from around the far corner of the building before us. Gina reached the car first so as to open the back passenger door for me. I set my case and my purse into the backseat first before I climbed in myself. Gina slid into the front seat next to Jerry, who flicked back his hair and glanced over at the two of us.  
“Next stop, Alba-cuckoo,” he announced, shifting the car into drive once we had shut the car doors. Once we reached the next street over, he spoke again.  
“Gina, look in the glove box—there’s something in there for the both of you.”  
I watched her lean forward to take a look inside. We stopped at the corner when she gasped.  
“The Pearl Jam patch!” she exclaimed. “I thought it was gone forever!”  
“Yeah, Sean found that while you ladies were coming here on the bus. He wasn’t able to find the Hole patch, though. I’ll try and sneak a Metallica one from one of the concession stands the next time I see them.”  
“And what’s the other thing?” I asked.  
Gina leaned forward again to show me that double album I remembered from my childhood and all those day trips from Las Cruces to Albuquerque and to Santa Fe.  
“The White Album,” I stated in a warm voice.  
“I thought we could do it in the road and use a little driving music,” Jerry suggested as we rolled up to a stoplight. There was a pause as we waited for the light to turn, and then I heard Gina open the jewel case. She put in the first disc as we headed onto the closest on-ramp to drive on back home. The sea of memories that returned to me right then was enough to bring a tear to my eye—it had been so long!  
All the trips my parents, Mark, and I made were during the daytime but to hear it at night gave the record a whole new meaning. Soft silvery moonlight washed over the sagebrush and the tiny scraggly sprigs of Joshua trees on either side of the highway. The stars overhead glittered across the blackened tapestry of the sky and against the bright power of the moon. I could still taste and feel Lars on my lips and on my tongue. I wanted to paint and draw at that moment, to touch his body and feel his rhythm against the desert blackness as the soft white above our heads kissed our heads.  
At one point, during the song “Julia”, Jerry turned off the air conditioner, which allowed me to roll down the window and stick my hand outside. The wind billowed over my fingers and the pads of my palm.   
We turned a bend in the road so the moonlight shone over me. I hadn’t felt this way since before Mark and I moved away to California; I almost started to cry from the feeling of nostalgia but alas, I could not bring myself to it.  
When we stopped for fuel and a midnight snack, I leaned back in the seat to rub my eyes, and I had no idea if it came from the desire to cry, from exhaustion, or from being in such a large city like Las Cruces.  
“I should tell you girls—before I forget,” Jerry started as he closed the lid to the gas tank, “Chris wants to meet the both of you, especially you, Marie.”  
“Chris wants to meet us, seriously?” I gasped.  
“Yeah! I called him from the room before the show and he goes, ‘yeah, I really wanna meet those two hardworking, crazy girls from California.’”  
“Did you tell him that we’re not even from California?” asked Gina.  
“Nah, I didn’t even think about that,” he confessed, climbing back into the driver’s seat. Once he started up the car again, there was a loud crack! from the underneath the hood. He gaped at us, alarmed.  
“What the fuck was that?” I demanded. He reached for the dial on the air conditioner to switch it back on and nothing happened.  
“Air conditioner,” he said with a sigh. “Well, thank Buddha it’s night and springtime. But that’s another thing I need fixed, though, next to the passenger window—”  
He and I kept the windows rolled down the rest of the ride back to Albuquerque and the house on Hermosa Street.


	33. The Wine Bottle

Gina and I hurried out of the back corridor of the theater to the door. I made out with Lars in that little nook, and then Gina and I were interviewed by these news reporters from Houston, Dallas, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York City, Atlanta, and Chicago for our zine because of our connections to STP, Chris, Lars, and Jerry, but notably Rob and Dean because we had built the closer rapport with them in San Diego. Everything seemed to contract into a pinhead shape right before my eyes as we rushed out into the warm spring night and towards the bus parked at the curb.  
I led her to the doors, folded open for us, and I climbed those steep steps first, past the driver’s seat and into the nook; Dean had taken a seat at the table with a Dixie cup of water while Rob stopped over his trunk near the back.  
“There they are!” said Dean. Rob stood up and set his sunglasses atop his head. He raised his eyebrows at us once Gina halted right behind me.  
“So?” he asked us. “How’d it go?”  
“It was incredible!” Gina exclaimed.  
“Yeah, these people from all over the country were asking us all of these questions,” I recalled, trying to catch my breath. “It was—starting to make me giddy a little bit. The lady from New York said we might be like the next big thing or something, like we could be properly published and be the next Mad Magazine or something like that.”  
“Wow!” Dean’s face lit up.  
“She also said,” Gina added, panting a bit, “we’ve got our foot in the door now that we can contact any magazine now and they can probably include Painted in a Corner with it.”  
“Alright!” Rob declared, rubbing his hands together. “This calls for a celebration!” He turned around to open the door of the miniature fridge and took out a minute wine bottle of dark glass. He set it on the table before Dean as Gina and I took our seats.  
“We really need to find a way to get champagne, bro,” Dean pointed out, taking one last swig of water. The bottle looked oddly familiar, like I had seen it in another place. As Rob set down four clean glasses on the surface before us, I started to wonder about it.  
“Where did you get that?” I asked him, gesturing to the bottle.  
“Ray and Eileen’s place. Dean and I like a little wine once in a while.”  
“Ah.”  
“Hey, and there’s Jerry!”  
Jerry shot up from the stairs at the front of the bus wearing a grin on his face.  
“Life is good, I presume?” he proclaimed as part of his greeting.  
“Yeah, you’re just in time—come join us, man!” Dean waved for him to have a seat at the table.  
“You ladies aren’t old enough to drink, though,” Jerry pointed out as he sat down next to Gina. “Remember, I’m driving back to Albuquerque, too.”  
“I’ll at least try it,” I told him, taking a glass.  
“Yeah, me, too,” Gina chimed in. I watched Rob pour each of us a glassful of that rich, dark red wine before pouring himself one and taking a seat across from me. He then raised his glass. Dean followed suit, and so did Jerry.  
“A toast,” he beamed at Gina and me, “to Jerry for Clash of the Titans coming soon this May featuring Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer, and to Marie and Gina for representing San Diego, Albuquerque, and New Orleans in their unlikely adventure of a lifetime. Here’s to you, and here’s to us.”  
“Here’s to us,” the four of us said in unison, clinking our glasses together. I took a sip of the wine for a taste of the grapes overlaying that harsh alcohol taste. Not bad, although I could see why some people chose to have bread and cheese with a glass of wine. Gina lowered her glass and wiped her lips with her fingertips.  
“Jesus,” she muttered as Rob and Dean downed half of their glasses at the same time.  
“Yeah, it’s not for everyone,” Jerry assured us; although I wondered if there was more to a drink than I originally thought. I gave the wine another, slightly bigger sip and almost gagged. I set down the glass and rubbed my eyes.  
“Anyways, let’s pack it in,” Jerry suggested, turning to the two brothers. “You guys have your next show in Vegas, and we—” he turned to us, “—have to boogie back to Albuquerque, and it’s already—” He took a glimpse across the aisle to check the time on the microwave. “—a quarter after eleven.”  
“I have to gather my things, anyway,” I noted, pushing the wine glass from me.


	34. The Affair

“Here—over here, Marie.”   
Lars guided me to the corridor leading back towards the dressing room but there was another nook in one side, a little dent in the wall. He led me back to a small unfinished space there behind the wall, the inside of which was lined with silken curtains. There was a large maroon colored pillow on the carpeted floor, and the whole nook carried the subtle scent of musk and jasmine leaves. He let go of my hand so as to take a seat on the carpet.  
I watched him undo another button of his shirt to show me some more of his chest: he leaned over onto his hip and extended his legs before patting the pillow next to him.  
I couldn’t hardly believe it: he was beckoning me to lay down with him. I nibbled on my bottom lip as I sank down to my knees onto the floor. He tossed his hair back from his forehead, and showed me a bit of his neck, and rolled a bit onto his back. I gazed on at his beautiful body: the one thing that separated me from him was a mere layer of navy blue cotton weave.  
“Come closer, darling,” he coaxed me in a gentle voice. I paused right there next to him: I had no idea what to do, or what to say to him. He gave his hair another flick back from his forehead before looking on at me with his eyebrows raised and his expression calm.  
“It’s okay,” he assured me, “I am gentle. I might be a bit abrasive, a bit of an acquired taste at first glance but I promise you—I know how to love.”  
I swallowed as I kept an eye on the crotch of his jeans and the hem of his shirt  
“Will you be soft?” I asked, my voice trembling.  
“I will be as soft as you want me to be. I will be like the smoothest of silk. I promise you that I will love every single inch of you.”  
I sighed through my nose before dropping down onto my hands, as if I was to do a push up. I loomed over his body, right over his chest and his neck. The tip of his tongue slipped out from between his cherry lips, and his face only softened even more at the sight of me hanging over him. He was such a chatterbox at first impression but this was a totally different boy here, a sweet little doll I wished more people knew about.  
“Kiss me,” he whispered.  
“Where? On the mouth?”  
“Yes—” I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth, and then I lowered myself closer to his face and his slightly parted lips. Smooth like a fresh picked vanilla bean. I closed my eyes and lowered myself even more onto his body: I brought my hand to the side of his face to feel his skin.  
“Touch—Touch me—” he pleaded in between kisses.  
“Where?” I lifted my face to look at him right into those green irises.  
“Here—” He patted his chest, and I unfastened each of the buttons on his shirt, all the way down to the waist of his jeans. I scanned the smooth opaque skin on his belly and the line of silken looking nappy sprigs of hair running from the button of his jeans all the way up to the middle of his chest. I ran my fingertips down his chest to the top of his stomach.  
It felt so wrong but so right at the same time, but it was what he wanted.  
“Right on my belly,” he gasped. “Touch me there—right on my belly. Please—”  
I lay my hand right upon his waist and then I had a feeling of what else he wanted. My thighs quivered from my standing on my knees on the carpet, but I managed to press my lips onto his once again; and then he gripped onto my hips. The feel of his fingers on the back of my jeans, slithered up the hem of my shirt and onto my skin, sent chills all up and down my spine and back to my hips. A sliver of a damp sensation welled up between legs as he touched and stroked my hips and the flesh on my lower back. His lips remained the consistency of silk and only grew softer with each and every kiss.  
The skin on his belly was warm, like smooth butter resting upon a biscuit straight out of the oven.  
His hands slid up my back. His fingers slithered up to the hooks of my bra. He was about to unfasten it when my knees gave out on me: I lay on top of his body. He grunted inside of his throat from my all but falling onto him. I took my lips off of his mouth and gazed into his eyes.  
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his face. He groaned out something that I didn’t exactly understand.  
“Huh?”  
“Du har ikke skadet mig, jeg lover, skat,” he choked out, “—that was my Danish-ness slipping through. I said you didn’t hurt me. Caught me off guard but didn’t hurt me.” I lifted myself off of him in that same push-up position.  
“God, your belly is so sexy,” I remarked; when he breathed in, his waist grew ever so slightly rounder and there was something so sensual about it.  
“I try my best, darling,” he croaked. I leaned in again for more kisses on his lips. Sure, I had slept with Jerry, but this was Lars. I had an affair with my best friend’s boyfriend but now I made it into an affair with the Danish boy as we made out right there on that little nook behind the corridor, away from prying eyes and inquisitive minds.  
I could feel myself growing more damp in between my legs, like he tickled me right there in my toy box. At one point, I lifted my head again so he could speak again.  
“Roll over onto your back, baby,” he commanded in a husky voice, “I know what to do.” He slid his hands out from underneath my shirt so I could climb off of him and lay flat on my back. He picked himself up and rolled onto his knees: he straddled my knees as he unbuttoned my jeans. I let him peel back the denim to expose my underwear and the tops of my thighs. I felt him go all the way down to my knees, and then he leaned into my thighs for a kiss.  
“Spread your legs,” he told me. I opened my thighs for him and he kissed me right in between them. His lips brushed against the smooth skin with a light finesse that it almost tickled.  
“That turns you on, doesn’t it?” he whispered. I lifted my head to see he had stripped down my panties so I was exposed to him. Before I could say anything, he bowed his head to my bare naked crotch.   
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. His tongue kissed me hello and I felt my hips gyrating from the feeling. He slithered inside of me like a snake and it drove me into overdrive.  
He gripped onto my thighs to hold me steady but I couldn’t stand it. I was coming. I was coming for Lars.  
“Marie?” Gina’s voice floated in from the corridor. He lifted his head and gasped for a breath.  
“Shit,” he muttered.  
“Ugh, I was getting interested, too,” I confessed, my chest heaving.  
“Here, let me help you—” he offered, sliding my panties back up my thighs. I sat up to pull up my pants and then climb to my feet. But before I could run out there, I turned to him, reclined back onto his hands and his shirt still opened to show me his gorgeous body.  
“Will I see you again?” I asked him in a hushed voice.  
“Soon enough, I promise,” he vowed with a wink, “now go meet up with her, min kære.” I buttoned up and ran out of the nook, and back into the hall to meet up with Gina, who stood there with her hands to her hips. She turned to notice me.  
“There you are,” she greeted me.  
“What’s up?”  
“Come on, Rob and Dean want to do something with us and Jerry out on the bus...”


	35. The Mistress

I had worn my best black outfit to the room at the back of the venue and looked around for Angeline from New York City. She had told me and Gina both to come to the room, but since I had already changed my clothes at that point, she told me to go by myself. I returned to the theater about a block from our hotel in Old Town Las Cruces.  
On the way over there, I thought about Lars and his big personality. Such a small boy and yet he filled up that tiny room with just his very presence. I couldn’t remove his voice or that big smile from my memory. What was odd about it was he struck me as such a quiet person, and I never expected him to be so vivacious and larger than life. It almost threw me a bit as I stopped at the street corner before crossing.  
I stared straight ahead at five guys congregated at one of the tables out on the front porch of the cafe across from me. They reminded me of Dean and his other two rock n’ roll friends hanging out at my high school in San Diego with their long dark hair and lithe bodies wrapped in dark clothing. A few people approached them from the inside to speak with them, but I paid very little attention as I walked towards the other corner. As I walked past them, I overheard one of them say something in a New Yorker accent. Not an accent I hear often in New Mexico, and it only reminded me of how I needed to hustle or else I would be late to my interview with Angeline. I heard the same guy mention Dave and Lars as I fell out of earshot.  
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear as I picked up the pace down the sidewalk. Lucky for me, the smoked glass front doors entered my view, and I hung a left down the narrow alleyway to the side street and the back door. The soles of my Chucks made echoes against the brick walls surrounding me with every step towards the back door. I recognized the large black bus with the three leafed flower on the side parked at the curb, and then I recognized the fiery red plumes adorning the crown of a head and the edges of shoulders as I came closer.  
“Oh hi, Dave,” I greeted him. He turned his head to flash me a little smile: he lifted his mirrored sunglasses to show me his eyes, the corners of which crinkled with a smile.  
“I suppose you’re here for the interview with the press,” he teased me.  
“Oh no, of course not. What makes you think that?”  
Dave let out a big, hearty laugh and tossed his hair back from his face with a flick of his head.  
“Well, you’re a minute early. They’re waiting for you and Miss Ribaux upstairs.”  
“Okay. Also when I was walking over here, I walked past a bunch of guys talking about you and Lars.”  
“What were they saying?”  
“No clue, I fell out of earshot by the time I heard your names. They were New Yorkers so their accents stayed with me.”  
“Oh you met Anthrax?” he asked me, his face lighting up.  
“Nah, I just walked by them. I didn’t even know who they were.”  
“Oh, you’ve got so much to learn!” he declared with a shake of his head. He patted me on the shoulder. “Anyways, get going. I’ll be over at that bistro across the way if you need anything.” I then stepped into the back corridor of the theater, a narrow cool bright lit hallway leading back to the bathrooms and the dressing rooms.  
“Marie!” a voice called out to me from the left; I recognized Angeline, the platinum blonde in a pantsuit from the art show back in Long Beach. I padded towards her and she shook my hand.  
“Where’s your friend?” she asked me in her Brooklyn accent.  
“Gina? Ah, she’s taking her sweet time. She should be here like any minute.”  
“Okay, good. But let’s get started with you, though.” She then guided me to a small, narrow stairwell which brought us to a large room. There must have been about two dozen people in there, each of them with notepads and pencils in hand. I staggered back a bit at the sight of them.  
“Hang on, I thought it was just going to be the two of us,” I pointed out to her.  
“I wanted it to be but so many others just wanted a piece of the pie,” she confessed with a shrug and a glum look upon her face. She gestured to the small chair right before us.  
“Have a seat,” she offered me. I sat down and let them all ask away.   
It was like one of those press conferences on TV. They wanted to know my age, my birthday, where I was born, my life story, and right as I said I was originally from up the road in Albuquerque, the woman with the short bob of mousy brown hair showed me a big smile.  
“Albuquerque! Well, I’m from Santa Fe, so it’s good to see a local make it well.”  
Right as she said that, the door behind me opened.  
“Oops! Oh, shit, Marie—I am sorry.” I turned to see Lars in the doorway, dressed in a navy blue button down shirt and black jeans and with his long hair hanging loose about his head. I turned back around to look at them, not knowing what to say right then.  
“Are you—his mistress? Just out of curiosity?” asked Mr. Hill from Los Angeles with a smirk on his face.  
“Oh, no, no,” I assured him, feeling my face grow warm. “No, he just—” I turned around to take a glimpse back at him.  
“What are you doing here?” I demanded in a hushed voice.  
“I just—walked into the wrong room,” he stammered, a soft blush crossing his apple cheeks. He swallowed as he backed out of the room and no sooner had he closed the door when it swung open again: Gina stumbled into the room right then, wearing her pink camisole and black pedal pushers. I felt my throat dry out and close up as she staggered towards me. That was something Lars had the ability to do for me: disorient me and make me forget about what I was doing right at the time.  
She set a hand on my shoulder and lingered next to me as they began interviewing her and asking her the same questions as me.  
“And now for the juicy question,” Angeline started, her pen ready, “when did you ladies begin Painted in a Corner?”  
“About a year ago,” I replied, “it started as a high school art project that I did where I made this—drawing, and superimposed it over some card stock so it actually looked like the page of a zine. I showed it to her—” I gestured back at Gina. “—and she suggested we start our own zine. We passed Xeroxes to some of our classmates—”  
“Rob and Dean, too,” she added.  
“Yeah, Rob and Dean had a huge hand in our success. They told everyone they knew about us. I guarantee we would be nothing without them”  
“How’d you come up with the name?” asked Mr. Martin from Houston.  
“Painted in a Corner?” I wondered aloud. “Well, we’re both art students, and I’m from near the Painted Desert.”  
“It’s also a phrase that’s similar to being caught between a rock and a hard place,” Gina elaborated. “We both have had difficult adolescences, so it felt all the more appropriate.”  
“And now for the even juicier question,” Angeline continued, “what do you ladies think of traditional publishing? Like say a big name magazine or someone eyes you and picks you up for formal publication?”  
Gina and I glanced at one another.  
“Never would’ve thought about that, to be honest,” she admitted, shifting her weight.  
“Yeah, that’s something... neither of us would have considered in the past. It’d be nice to get that exposure, and if someone asked, I would be more than happy to come in contact with them to strike a deal.” I pictured us in a featured spot in The Rocket, and I began to wonder if such a possibility was in the cards for the two of us.  
Soon, they all thanked us and once we left the room, Jerry’s voice floated from the corridor downstairs. Gina and I rushed down the creaky steps to the corridor, where she darted straight ahead to meet up with Jerry. I stood there as Lars approached me from the left. He gestured for me to come closer to him. I swallowed at the sight of him.  
“Marie, come with me,” he coaxed me out of the stairwell.  
“Why? What for?” I asked him in a hushed voice.  
“Just come with me. I want to make up for walking in on you earlier. So, come with me. I am not trying to be creepy or anything—I just want you for a moment.”  
I swallowed again as I entered the corridor and he took my hand.


	36. The Boy From Another World

He was the kind of guy with a sly grin upon his face and a twinkle in his eye whenever he spoke of something he loved, and yet he still carried with him this deep melancholia. I could see it in his eyes: a deep graveness upon his round moonlike face, and a reservoir of strength inside of him that the mere very few knew about. The cold blackness that surrounded Scandinavia fell upon his head and shoulders like a heavy cloak and followed him up the mountains of New Mexico, but underneath those shadows was a man, a boy. A boy who, when he opened his mouth, filled a whole room with his personality and his high pitched, scratchy voice. A boy from another world.  
I met him the night after the STP show and Angeline from the art show had invited the two of us to meet up with her in the back of the venue so as to do an interview, but we had the hotel room for just one more day and we still had our things in the bus. I worried that with that in mind, we had to find another place to stay but I had my doubts with that Jerry could seek out another place because he only had so much money left in his pocket before he flew out to Dallas to do the first date of Clash of the Titans. Gina had asked him if there was a date near us, and he told us there was one in Albuquerque, another in San Diego, and another in Costa Mesa near Gina's parents' house; he vowed to get us in backstage at either of the three, but he had his doubts because backstage passes were hard to scrounge up for that tour. But Jerry wanted us to meet Layne, Mike, and Sean so badly, and we could hang out with Dave and his band, and maybe Anthrax, Slayer, and Suicidal Tendencies, too. I hoped he could make a decent check for himself because it always killed me to see him having to stretch his money.  
The three of us drove around Las Cruces after the show in search of another hotel for us to stay in so Gina and I could do our interview with Angeline from the New York Times. It was difficult because of the traffic surrounding the theater, and the bus parked at the curb wasn't helping matters with our pulling out of the alleyway. Since it was still rather warm out that night, Jerry fiddled with the dial on the air conditioner while Gina and I both had one hand on the rolling handles of the windows.  
“Come on, dammit—we're going to overheat otherwise!” he grumbled, turning off the air conditioner and rolling down the window.  
“We should've just hung out for a bit,” said Gina as she took off her glasses to clean off the lenses.  
“Yeah, and get kicked out of our room, too,” I pointed out. The car before us inched forward and we followed suit; Gina fanned herself with her hand even though I knew it would do nothing but make her feel hotter. I could solely think about the next day, in how it would cool off, and also the stretch of cool ocean before San Diego. If there was one thing I missed about Santa Fe and Albuquerque, despite the heat of their own, it had to be the fact both cities perched high over the heat of the lowland desert.  
I leaned back against the firm leather with my arms up on the top of seat and held still as the traffic crawled forward to the next stoplight, all the way around the theater to the main street. I felt a tiny bead of sweat slid down my side, from the underside of my bra to my hip. At least my head wasn't wet.  
“You know what?” Jerry told us once we reached the stoplight.  
“What's that?” asked Gina with a slight pant.  
“There's a nice hotel down the block here. We'll stay there for the night. It's nice and it's close by so you two can walk back here tomorrow.”  
“We also have our things in the bus, too,” she pointed out.  
“It's alright, we can go back for them. Marie, you still have your clothes in the back seat there, don't you?”  
“From the art show?” I asked him; I took a glimpse to my left to see my black shirt and jeans there on the leather next to me. “Yeah, they're right here. Good thing it's supposed to cool off tomorrow.”  
“Yeah, I'll say,” he remarked, pulling forward onto the main street. “I don't know how you and your family took it out here in the desert. Fuck, it's hot.”  
“Well, we lived in Albuquerque, which is higher up than Las Cruces. And Santa Fe is just a lovely place all around no matter what the time of year. But now you know why when Mark, Mom, Dad, and I had our road trips down here, we went in the winter time. March at the latest.”  
“Here it is middle of April, though,” he noted.  
“Right. And it's not unusual for it to start getting hot, either. One time Dad flew into the airport downtown from Chicago during the middle of July and he said he couldn't get home quick enough, it was so hot.”  
“And how long is it from here to Albuquerque?”  
“Three hours. But, you know, when it's a bread oven outside, it feels like three weeks.”  
“And imagine this heat but with a bunch of humidity tacked onto it, though,” Gina added as we passed through an intersection, one with a cafe on the corner; “and you get New Orleans.”  
“Oh, I know,” he agreed with her, “before a hurricane, too.”  
“Right before a hurricane!” she exclaimed as we reached the hotel in question: a squarish building of faded dark brick and a single front door out front, and without another word, Jerry pulled up to the curb.  
“I am not going around back,” he confessed, “and I don't think I need to explain why, either.”  
“No way,” said Gina, unbuckling her seatbelt. The heat had stuck my skin to the leather so it felt like I peeled off tape from the seat as I leaned forward to climb out of the car. No sooner had I stepped out to the hot night when I heard a voice to my left.  
“Hey, Jerry!”  
I turned back around to the car to fetch my purse when Jerry spoke.  
“Hey, man! Didn't expect to see you here—” I lifted my head out of the car to shut the door and see him there, the other man I had written a letter to.  
He was short, shorter than Jerry, and he had tied his long smooth hair into a ponytail at the back of his head to keep it off of his neck: since I was so acquainted with his long lush hair, the sight of his ponytail only made his face appear slimmer so I almost didn't recognize him at first. But then he smiled and showed Jerry his little apple cheeks, and I recognized his eyebrows and his green eyes even in the dim light from the street. He wore a light gray Anthrax shirt with the short sleeves rolled up a bit towards his shoulders, small black shorts, and was barefoot.  
“It's just too hot out,” he was telling Gina, gesturing to his bare feet.  
“You should be careful, there are scorpions out here,” I pointed out to him, approaching them.  
“Rock Me Like a Hurricane or the creepy crawly kind?” he teased me with a sly smirk. He almost sounded like he came from the Midwest rather than Denmark, and he had a peculiar way of emphasizing certain words and I started to wonder about the Danish language.  
“Rock You Like a Hurricane kind,” I played along.  
“All the more reason to mosey on inside then since it might flood.” The corner of his mouth raised higher at the sight of me; I tossed a strand of stray hair back from my face to keep the heat away and I could feel him watching me.  
“Marie, right?” he asked me, his expression turning serious.  
“Medusa,” Jerry corrected.  
“Ah, yes, Medusa. And you were—” He turned to Gina.  
“Persephone.”  
“Persephone, yes! Anyways, let's go indoors before one of us collapses from this horrible heat.” He led us into the hotel where Jerry got the three of us a small room on the first floor. I lingered behind him and underneath the air conditioning vent. Lars strode up to me with the tip of his tongue lulling in one corner of his mouth. I noticed underneath his shirt, he had a slight stubborn tummy left behind from childhood, or just from eating healthily: they had come a long way themselves after all.  
I showed him a slight grin, but I felt unsure of him. It was a nagging feeling that lurked in the back of my mind, like I had somehow crossed a line with him in my writing and something kept him from admitting that to me. He nibbled on his bottom lip as he eyed my chest and then my face.  
“Is everything alright?” he asked me, knitting his eyebrows together.  
“Yeah, just—hot. Now you know why I live in San Diego.”  
“Lovely San Diego,” he remarked, his apple cheeks returning. “You just saw—er, The Stone Roses?”  
“Stone Temple Pilots.”  
“Stone Temple Pilots, that was it! Yeah, Jerry told me and all I could remember was the 'stone' part. So you are from New Mexico, are you?”  
“Yeah, I moved out to California last year to take care of my mom. The other alternative was staying in Albuquerque in an empty house with no way out of town.”  
“Wow. Erm—” He turned around to make sure Jerry and Gina remained out of earshot, and then returned to me.  
“Can I tell you something?” he lowered his voice to a near whisper.  
“Sure.”  
“I want you to know that—if you need anything—and I mean anything, because I know what it's like to be lonely, and I have been an isolate loner most of my life at that—by all means, come talk to me. You and I can talk about anything together, in private, in public, whatever you want.”  
“Really?”  
“Oh, yeah. And we—Metallica—are going on tour later this year to support the Black Album, so I shall give you management's number if you like and they'll hook you up with the hotels we're staying at. I really, really want—” He shifted his weight closer to me. “—to find out more about the artist kind enough to write to me.”  
“You—You mean that?”  
“My hand on my grandfather's ashes.”  
“Marie!” Gina called out to me. He whirled around as she and Jerry were gesturing for us to follow them into the hall to our room.  
“More on that later,” he vowed in a low voice as I ducked out from underneath the vent, and the two of us caught up with them. As we made our way into the room, I was amazed by Lars' jovial laughter and the fact that even with his small stature, he may as well have been as big and tall as Jerry. The whole entire time, he sat next to me on my bed and it felt like I was next to an old friend, a guy I had known from elementary school and neither of us missed a beat with each other. The four of us talked a bit about music and then by two, it was time for bed and Lars to return to his room not too far from there. I turned in with him firmly etched in mind: I was still slightly unsure of him, but a voice in the back of my mind told me I made a good choice writing to him.


	37. The Lounge Fly

Rob and Dean had invited Gina and me backstage after the show so as to meet Scott and Eric, but following that passionate kiss between her and Jerry, I wasn’t really in the mood for any sort of trouble. I just wanted to meet the two of them, and then boogie back to the room for the night. It was already eleven thirty, and I began to feel the rush of adrenaline waning away to hone in the fatigue of the night. I wanted to get out of my clothes and take a shower, and then crawl into bed for the night before heading back up to Albuquerque.  
As Rob and Dean met up with us at the back door of the backstage area, I thought about our pen names and how, ever since things began to take off for the two of us, Gina stopped referring to herself as Persephone and me as Medusa. I wondered if it had to do with the fact Jerry was with her, but even before the upward climb she kept our aliases intact for the most part. I wondered if Angeline was going to ask us a question about our names as we ambled down the hallway to the dressing rooms.  
I remembered I had tucked a copy of that first edition of Painted in a Corner under the passenger seat of Dean’s car because my hands were full of art supplies: I wondered what had happened to it, and if it was still there, untouched. I started to think about any press coverage on our little zine, and if the head honchos at big name magazines wanted a peek at that drawing in there.  
The narrow, dim lit hallway smelled of incense and champagne, and we were the only ones headed towards the dressing room: the stage hands all funneled towards the stage itself so as to tend to the equipment out there. But the two of them were eager to take us by the hand and lead us there.  
We had reached the dressing rooms only to find the room was empty. The sole light in the ceiling had been left on to bathe the room in warm golden light but Scott was nowhere to be found.  
“The Lounge Fly is AWOL,” Dean remarked, pressing his hands to his hips.  
“We just saw him, too,” said Gina with an exasperated sigh. Footsteps behind us caught my attention: I turned just as Jerry approached us.  
“Come on, we’ve gotta go,” he told Gina and me.  
“What for?” I demanded.  
“I’ll explain later, and—where’s Scott?”  
“We were just wondering that,” Rob answered, running a hand over the crown of his head.  
“Eric’s probably out doing an interview or something,” Dean followed up.  
“Anyway, come on, girls, let’s go,” Jerry coaxed us again, guiding us back out to the hall. “We have to get our asses back to the room, anyways.”


	38. The Kiss

Even though they had played a relatively short set, I remembered what Dean had told me on the bus, in that there would be an encore, one in which Jerry would join them up onstage to play guitar during “Sex Type Thing”. I stood next to Gina there at the rail, gazing up at the surface of the stage in anticipation. The crowd chattered in low voices behind us, and then, once a few minutes had surpassed, several people started to clap in unison. The blast of cool air from the small round black fans lining the edge of the stage fluttered my hair, and I knew they were to return to the stage at any given moment.  
Gina joined in on the claps behind us, and then I followed suit. More and more joined in. I raised my arms over my head, and so did she. A few more audience members mimicked us, and soon the whole front section of the theater had turned into a sea of raised hands over heads. It was seeing Metallica all over again, except this time, the blond slender drummer Eric took to the stool behind his kit and the large red and white STP logo. Dean returned to sling his guitar over his shoulder; Rob cleaned off his sunglasses with the hem of his shirt and put them back on before picking up his bass, leaned against the black and silver amplifier. Scott returned to the stage, stripped of his shirt and revealing his lithe, sleek body, coated with a fine layer of sweat.  
“We’d like to introduce our friend Jerry Cantrell!” Rob declared through his microphone. Gina and I cheered as Jerry stepped onto the stage with his bright sea foam green guitar slung over his shoulder and his long blond hair billowing back from his head. He waved at us and blew a kiss at Gina before he began to play. To think he had no other place to go than Chris’ house, and yet here he was, playing with Stone Temple Pilots and blessing the both of us. He mouthed the words “thank you” to us as he took a little silver pick out of his jeans pocket.  
We watched Scott loom over us with the microphone gripped in hand and his eyes gazing hard into our faces. It almost felt as though he was seducing us, shepherding us to come onto stage with him, right in front of Romulus and Remus as they strummed their guitars and rebuilt Rome. His square face and crown of light hair etched its way into my memory as he tipped the head of the microphone towards us. It was nothing like the Metallica show now as I leaned in close and Gina right next to my face.  
“We know you want what’s on our minds!” we shouted in unison, but she had the lesser volume to her voice and before she could correct herself, he then tipped it back to his mouth for the next line. Gina and I clasped our hands together and let out high-pitched squeals. I glanced up at Jerry, who flashed me a thumbs-up and a wink for a second before he had to proceed playing. This was it: I knew he wanted me from there, right in front of everybody. Everyone heard me while she almost receded into the audience. It was unintentional but that happened and I had a feeling my fate between Jerry and me was sealed.  
Once he and Dean performed twin ending solos, Gina put her arm around me while we watched them. I had butterflies in my stomach at the sight of Jerry’s fingers running about the neck of his guitar. The same fingers that got me...  
Soon, both men leaned their guitars against the amps for a bit of feedback. Rob set down his bass and Eric chucked the drumsticks out into the crowd, high over our heads.  
“Thank you, Las Cruces!” Scott announced into his microphone; “y’all have been fan-fucking-tastic!” Everyone cheered once he departed the stage into the darkness behind the curtain: Gina and I ducked out to the far left side to the side door to meet up with Jerry. We emerged outside into the warm night, and that was when my head started to sweat from the contrast of staying in air conditioned rooms for such lengthy amounts of time in the New Mexican heat. I peered up at the twinkling stars against the blackness once he stumbled out of the door next to us, the one leading to the backstage area.  
“Phew!” He tossed a bit of hair back from his face. He straightened his shirt before turning to us with a big grin.  
“There are my riot grrrls!”  
Before I could say anything, he wrapped his arms around Gina and dipped her back to the ground. I watched them interlock their lips with each other right in front of me; his blond hair dangled over her chest and neck like a curtain, while she ran her hands down his back towards his hips. The sole noise came from the crowd in the auditorium as I stood there in silence. Guess either Lars or Chris would have to do for me now.  
He let go of her and brought her back to an upright position, and rubbed his hands together.  
“Alright! Now onto what Rob and Dean were talking about earlier...”


	39. The Message

“What’s it say?” asked Gina as I unfolded the note; she stepped out of the way of a couple of audience members. I read the piece of paper under the golden and royal blue glow of the neon sign next to me.  
“’Meet me in the backstage area tomorrow at six--we’re doing an interview about Painted in a Corner. Angeline.’“  
I folded the paper back up and stuffed it into my jeans pocket. She showed me a raised eyebrow in bewilderment.  
“Angeline?”  
“Yeah, remember her from the art show in Long Beach?”  
She hesitated for a moment, and then her face lit up under the light of the neon.  
“Oh, yeah, her! She’s from The New York Times, isn’t she?”  
“Yes, she is! Now, come on--the guys are going to come on at any second...”


	40. The Stone Temple Pilots Show

How I have missed Las Cruces: it was a month and a year ago to the day since Mark, Mom, and Dad and I were here for our last road trip as a family, and the last time Mom and Dad were together as a couple. I had my doubts upon the bus ride in that returning here would kick up some old, painful memories, but once we lumbered into the outskirts of town and I recognized those jagged, snow capped mountains to the north, it felt as though I was returning the feeling of being home. I thought about the house up in Albuquerque and all of the old memories up there. It was moments like this I wondered why Mom and Dad even split up in the first place. But I decided not to preoccupy myself with that and focus on what was ahead that night: Gina and me getting to see STP front and center, and hang out with them backstage before the show!  
Jerry had told me that he would be there before us because I wouldn't know where to look for the band's bus. He also told me that Chris and Lars would be at some point, but he never elaborated when exactly we would meet them.  
I thought about Lars, in particular that last photograph of him I saw in The Rocket before leaving Long Beach: he was looking really good at that point, with his smoothed hair and his face looking a little bit fuller than the last time I looked. I wondered if he liked to eat as we pulled off of the highway and headed towards the heart of town; I pictured myself feeding him dinner, or better yet breakfast, and I had hope that if shown the opportunity he'd eat every last morsel.  
Gina stripped off her sunglasses to rub her eyes and then put them back on: for a second, I thought she'd take them off for the incoming nightfall but she put them back on to maintain her edge. As far as I knew, even though we hadn't written an edition of Painted in a Corner in months, and I hadn't referred to myself as Medusa since New Year's Eve, we were still riot grrrls. Jerry said we were part of the girl riot after all, and I had faith he had told Chris and Lars about it as well. I couldn't get Lars out of my mind, the thought of his round face imprinted on my mind like the full moon against a black sky. But then Chris entered into my mind, with his long black tendrils billowing back from his handsome face. They both seemed like such long shots to me, but I could feel it right in between my legs for the both of them.  
In fact, the feeling only grew as we came closer to the theater in the heart of downtown. It came to a point where I thought about reaching down inside of my pants so as to touch myself, but alas I could not given all of the passengers around us. It was like that proverbial itch I couldn't scratch, that elusive nagging I never managed to reach even if I used something with a good edge.  
The bus lumbered up to the sidewalk outside of the front of the venue. Don't think I've been here before: very old looking on the outside, such that I don't think it's been refurbished or remodeled since it was first built, and I pictured someone climbing up those elaborate, intricate creamy white notches on the outside with ease. Once the bus came to a stop, Gina stood up first to fetch her things out of the compartment over our heads. Once she had her bag in hand, I did the same and followed her outside to the warm early evening and onto the sidewalk.  
She lifted her sunglasses and glanced about the street as more passengers followed our suit.  
“He said he'd be out front here,” she recalled over the noise from the street. I took a look around for myself, until I spotted long blond hair at the far corner of the street to our left.  
“There he is!” I nodded over at the edge of the building. She followed my gaze and then dodged towards him: I followed her with my bags weighing me down a bit, but I managed to catch up with her and Jerry. He greeted us with a big beaming smile and a beer bottle in one hand.  
“There are my little riot grrrls!” he declared. “Come with me—”  
Jerry guided us to the sidewalk lining the plain white wall of the theater: I took a glimpse up at the white stucco and had a burning desire to paint some kind of mural here.  
“You ladies came in the nick of time, too,” he told us over the pattering of our shoes on the sidewalk, “the doors opened like not even a minute ago.”  
“Wow,” was all I could say.  
“I was starting to get worried, to be honest,” he continued as we dipped into some shade cast by one of the buildings across the street. “Rob and Dean said you can leave your things in the bus for the time being.”  
We rounded the far corner and came face to face with a narrow side street: Jerry had parked his car next to the curb right in front of us, and right in front of the car stood the tall black and royal purple bus with the black and white STP logo and the three leafed flower imprinted on the back. He took a small sip from his bottle before dropping it into the wiry bin on the curb next to the front fender of his car; Rob poked his head out of the front door of the bus, and took off his mirrored sunglasses for a better look at us. He flashed me and Gina a little grin.  
“There they are!” he declared; once we came closer to the bus, he offered to take our things and put them in the safe place that was the bus.  
“And these are for the two of you—” He handed both Gina and me a white rectangle pressed in a laminated sleeve. “—so you girls can get in that way—” He nodded to the back door behind us. “—and of course, to the rail easily.” He flashed the both of us a wink as we thanked him in unison. He then turned to Jerry and beckoned for him to step onto the bus for something.  
“We'll be out in a minute,” Rob assured us as Jerry set one foot on the steep grated step leading up to the lush interior of the bus. Gina and I eagerly whirled around and headed towards the back door: I held the door for her before I followed her into the vast corridor and the backstage area, the latter of which was lit by soft white lights over our heads and a series of neon lights stuck to the wall on the left. To my left stood a narrow wooden stairwell; to the right of us was a small nook in the bricks; beyond that was the first of two curtains before beholding the stage.  
“So where should we go?” Gina asked me.  
“I don't know. I say we wait for Jerry and the boys, though—”  
“You girls shouldn't be back here,” said a black haired woman wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard; we flashed her the passes and even though she nodded her head, she tapped the watch on her wrist.  
“Oh, okay,” I told her, and we turned to double back when Rob and Jerry bustled past us towards the backstage area. Gina and I were about to stumble back outside.  
“Marie!” Dean called after me. I stopped to catch him stepping through the back door with a folded piece of paper in hand.  
“Thank you,” I said to him as he gave it to me. “What is it?”  
“It's important and pertains to Painted in a Corner. That's all I know—” He was cut off by the stage hand guiding him off into the backstage area. Gina caught up with me from the back door.


	41. The Next Bus Ride

Jerry had called Harold two mornings before the show in Las Cruces, telling us that he and Dave had both pitched in for mine and Gina’s plane tickets to Phoenix. We were to fly there at about eight o’clock in the morning and then meet up at the bus station there outside of the airport, and take the bus to Las Cruces. I had my doubts, given I hadn’t been to Las Cruces since before Mom and Dad split. But on the other hand, this was to be hell of a way to spend spring break other than at Harold and Cassandra’s house, especially since she kept throwing dirty looks at me and Gina all throughout the dinner last night.  
I still remember asking Gina why she even bothered living with in that house, especially since she attended school in San Diego and she need not make that commute from Long Beach on a regular basis.  
“Because it’s my dad,” she always told me, “I can’t leave him behind like that.” It made sense, especially since her mother Ellen passed two years before during a late season storm back in New Orleans. The night after dinner, I thought about the sneers Cassandra threw at me in particular, and I had a lingering doubt in the back of my mind that it was because I’m not only a riot grrrl, but a riot grrrl pushing the boundary of fat. Sitting there with my tousled red hair damp after my shower, and my snug fitted Ramones shirt, and looking as though I had a partial can of uncooked pastry dough underneath my shirt. She seemed rather curt with Gina in particular, and I had always believed her about her stepmother, I never imagined it to be that uncomfortable that Gina hardly slept that night.  
So when Harold drove Gina and me to the airport the next morning, it felt as though I could finally breathe in that early morning fog after holding it in for two nights in a row. He hugged the both of us before we boarded the plane: when he embraced her, he closed his eyes before giving her a kiss on the side of the face. When he hugged me, he whispered into my ear, “stay out of trouble and take care of her.”  
“I will,” I whispered back before letting go of him. We slung our purses over our shoulders and entered the terminal together.  
We filed through the narrow aisle towards our seats near the front of the plane; once I sank down in the soft cushions next to the window, Gina tapped me on the shoulder.  
“Marie, that guy two rows in front of us just looked at you,” she told me with a slight smirk on her face. I followed her gaze over the seats in front of us to the man with the pile of kinky black hair atop his head two rows across the aisle from us. He flashed a glimpse to the side, and held it long enough so I could see the long Roman nose and his large brown eyes: his skin was like the color of mocha, just an exotic human being all of five feet before us. Even though I had no idea if I wanted to be with someone at the moment, I showed her a little grin because she and I both knew what we wanted should all of this never work out with Jerry.  
Gina fell asleep once the plane took off for Phoenix, but since she had taken the aisle seat, and given it wasn’t all that long of a flight, I was stuck there next to the window, examining the clouds and the stretch of Mojave Desert down below us. I never could talk to that guy, and I didn’t want to wake her. I took out that notepad I nicked from Cassandra and a pen from my purse, and proceeded to doodle.  
I flashed back on the image of Medusa and Persephone building Rome in a day. The feeling had subsided when things began taking off for us but I still had those flashes of memory every so often. I pictured the snakes on my head, slithering about the crown with their tongues flickering from their narrow mouths; I pictured her with the pomegranate nestled in one hand and a select few handful of seeds in the other. I envisioned it all, but I couldn’t draw it. I kept thinking about that man in front of us.  
When there was about five minutes left before touch down in Phoenix, I glanced up at him again, and he turned his head again. That time I caught his attention because he turned his neck enough for a look at me. He nodded at me and showed me a little smile; I grinned at him as I gave him a pretty little wave. He turned back around when the lights flickered on, telling us to stay seated for the landing. Gina stirred and rubbed her eyes as we touched down on the tarmac; and we shuffled ahead of the guy in front of us.  
Once we made our way to the terminal, she gasped.  
“The bus is supposed to leave in like ten minutes!” she declared, breaking into a run. “Come on! Come on!”  
I fixed the strap on my purse when I felt a tap on my shoulder. He towered before me with his thick kinky black hair dangled down to the bottoms of his shoulder blades, and his large, deep set brown eyes gazing back at me. He was like Chris, slender and lanky, but a shade darker and more mysterious. He handed me a little piece of paper, his facial expression never changing.  
“I’m Joey,” he told me in a hushed voice.  
“Marie,” I said; “but I also go by Medusa.” And he showed me an impish grin before making a phone gesture to his ear. He mouthed “call me” at me before turning away. I ran after Gina with the piece of paper clutched in my hand and the purse over my shoulder. She turned to me once I caught up with her.  
“Was that the guy in front of us?” she eagerly asked me.  
“It was! His name is Joey and he just gave me his number.”  
Her face lit up at the sound of that. “Marie, you little vixen! First Chris and Jerry, then Lars, now this tall dark and handsome fella. Come on, let’s get a move on...”  
We reached the outside of the airport, and we were greeted by the blast of warm spring air and bright morning sunshine. This place was always too hot for me, even in the springtime and even for someone like me from the state next door. Gina and I grabbed out luggage from the cart before checking in with the driver behind the wheel of the long silvery bus with the dark tinted windows.  
I had Joey’s number in my hand as I showed the driver of the bus my ticket, and then... I couldn’t find it after that. I dropped it into my purse and it must have stayed down there, somewhere at the bottom, because I thought about calling him once we found a pay phone in Las Cruces. But I noticed I couldn’t find it once I spotted a phone in Tucson.  
I guessed Medusa wasn’t so hot after all seeing as all I do is misplace things and get them all mixed up.


	42. The Dinner Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”

Harold and Cassandra’s house was one of those little cottages in the neighborhoods near Alamitos Beach, right across the bay from the Queen Mary. Gina wasn’t kidding when she said this cute little blue and white house was the perfect place to live given the proximity to the waters. Two large oak trees stood in the front yard next to a cluster of palms shorter than me and Gina both, nestled against their low plain wooden fence. I was eager to return to the house following the art show for a bite to eat and to call it a night. Soon we would be back in Las Cruces to see STP and to meet Chris and Lars at last!  
I burst out of the backseat of Harold’s car with the ribbon in hand and the note tucked underneath my armpit, and sprinted up to the front step. Gina hurried after me with our purses over her shoulder and her hand atop her head to keep her hat on. Angeline’s name and New York accent seared through my mind. I told her we were going to be in Las Cruces, but I had no idea where she wanted to have the interview. All I knew was she asked Gina and me for an interview about our art zine, about Painted in a Corner. The thought of Dave being there in our presence made my heart skip several beats. What a way to begin spring break!  
I rushed into the house, eager to change my clothes and take a shower of power. I darted down the hall to Gina’s room to set down my things before making my way to the bathroom across the hall. Once I shut the door behind me, I stripped off my clothes, and climbed into the white porcelain tub, and switched on the warm water. I scrubbed myself down with the soft soap, and then my hair with that minty shampoo Mom gave me the week before. I thought about the house up in Albuquerque, and if the DeLeos had kept their promise and locked it up before leaving the other day. I had hope that they did as I rinsed out my hair and the remaining suds from my skin.  
Soon, I switched off the faucet and reached for the clean towel on the rung to my right so as to dry off. I climbed out of the tub right as I heard a knock on the door.  
“Yes?” I called out.  
“It’s me.”  
“Hang on—” I wrapped the towel around my chest to hide my naked body, and then lunged forward to open the door. Gina stood before me holding a pillowcase to her chest: I glanced down at her bare legs and I wondered what she had in mind at the moment.  
“I need to share something with you,” she said in a low voice.  
“Uh... okay? Can I at least put on some panties first?”  
“Well... yeah.” Without another word, I ducked behind the door for my clothes and brushed past her to the bedroom. I knelt down before my things for a clean pair, and out them on with the towel still around me. I stood back up right as she returned to the bedroom. She dropped the pillowcase to show off her skimpy black bra, which matched her panties, the waistband of which hung low underneath her belly button and the slight curve underneath her waist.  
“I wonder if Jerry will find this sexy,” she confessed, crossing the carpet to check herself out in the mirror. I took a closer look at her bra and noticed tiny pearly red polka dots on the outside, which made me think of pomegranate seeds.  
“Dude, I think it’s sexy and I'm not the one dating you,” I told her. In the reflection, I spotted her tongue slithering out from between her lips at the sound of that, and then she turned to me. Before she could say anything, Cassandra’s high pitched scratchy voice floated into the room. I threw down the towel and hastily threw on my sleeveless Ramones shirt and my red shorts.  
Cassandra was a short, squat woman with flyaway silver hair and a homely face: she looked like a librarian straight out of a children’s book, from the cowlicks jutting out from behind her ears to the cat eye glasses strung about her neck with the gold weave string. She watched me slide into the seat at the kitchen table with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips. I sucked in my stomach at the sight of her. I started to understand why Gina struggled with living here despite the closeness to the beach and the Queen Mary.  
I shifted my weight in the chair once Gina herself entered the room from behind me, dressed in a camisole and a clean pair of shorts.  
“So how did the show go?” asked Cassandra, her words slithering out from her mouth like that of a snake.  
“Good, good,” Gina replied with a slight tremble to her voice.  
“We—” I cleared my throat. “—were asked to do an interview with the New York Times when we go to Las Cruces this week.”  
“The New York Times, wow.” But she seemed rather unimpressed by that as I watched her eyes examine the drips of water on the wet tendrils of hair over my bare shoulder.   
The whole dinner it felt as though she was judging every inch of me and my every move. Even though the four of us made conversation, it was as if she fell silent on purpose at the sight of me, and more so Gina. I wasn’t a fan of this dinner party here but at least I went to bed later on feeling excited about the trip to Las Cruces. I had no idea when we would go, and Jerry never specified, but I had my hopes. He even made me comfortable during our encounter, after all.  
I knew Jerry wasn’t making a lot of money on his own terms, but I knew he was willing to serve us well. If he made enough money from The Clash of the Titans, I knew he would want to share the wealth with us. But he had also mentioned the possibility of his paycheck to us bouncing, and the very thought of that left me laying there in bed next to Gina with my eyes closed and my mind refusing to go to sleep.  
Chris, Lars, and Jerry, set the two of us free.  
The phone rang in the other room, once, twice—  
“Hello?” Harold answered. “Oh, hi, Jerry!” And then, just like clockwork, I could finally fall asleep.


	43. The Art Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “When she talks, I hear the revolution.  
> In her hips, there’s revolution.  
> When she walks, the revolution’s coming.  
> In her kiss, I taste the revolution!”  
> -”Rebel Girl”, Bikini Kill

I awoke the next morning to the feel of an empty side of the bed and an overhanging cool feeling upon the bed sheet. Jerry had kept his promise and left over the night once I had fallen asleep. I thought about him laying there next to me in the guest bedroom of Harold and Cassandra's house right after Gina had fallen asleep, and I knew he still wanted it from me after our first night together. Chris and Lars entered my mind right then, and something told me I was to choose out of the three of them if and when the opportunity presented itself. I only knew they were going to be in Las Cruces this week, but where and when were two other different questions.  
I rolled onto my back to stare up at the shades of soft gray against the cottage cheese, all of those tiny shadows upon even more tiny shadows like a vast soup over my head and my body. Seeing all of those little details gave me some inspiration. I wanted to make new art with more details, more texture, more of something to give it more flavor and more power. I wanted to do more, to make more, to keep going until it was impossible for me to do such a thing.  
I lifted myself into an upright position so as to stare at Gina, facing away from me and at the wall perpendicular to me, and then the window on the opposite side of the room from me: the gray morning sunlight felt to be a bit much at first but after blinking a few times, my eyes adjusted to the light. I knew I had had my sketchbook somewhere but I could not remember where exactly in either my purse or my overnight bag I had dropped it in.  
Too many times I'll have something on my person and I need to stick it into my purse or my courier bag out of convenience and the fact of it would go in one ear and out the other. That was another bad habit of mine aside from obsessing over someone or something: I was glad Dean offered to hide that first edition of the zine in his car because I knew for a fact I was going to lose it when I left Mom's house. But I climbed out of bed and knelt down next to my bag in search of it: sure enough, I found the sketchbook laying on its back face at the bottom. I opened it up and I remembered I had another one back home in Albuquerque, the one I had left in my room when I went out there with Rob and Dean.  
This was my school sketchbook, the one I had saved for the autumn and winter terms even though I hadn't cracked it open at all in the past six months. Gina never stirred as I flicked the first blank page to the front cover, and opened the book to the second page, where I had made those drawings of our alter egos, Medusa and Persephone. I was the man eater and the fiery headed vixen with a brother on a power trip, hence Medusa. Gina came from the swirling torrential darkness surrounding the bayou, or the underworld as she called it, hence Persephone. The snakes on Medusa's head looked so smooth and so simple from the watercolor pencils, while the pomegranate seeds in Persephone's hands looked like nothing more than tiny red dots.  
My drawing has advanced significantly since I made this one, and I have learned to better respect the watercolor since then. I couldn't recall the date of this one and that was damn foolish of me to not write it down on the corner of the page.  
The aroma of coffee floated into the room from down the hall: my cue to close the book and check out breakfast before our big day.

* * * * * * * * * *

Once Gina and I were dressed and had finished our cups of coffee, Harold led us out to his tiny black car parked out there in the driveway. I had planned on showering the night before when I arrived there in Long Beach with Jerry, but we had left Mom's house a touch too late and I felt too exhausted by the pressures of school enough. I made a mental vow to take a shower once he drove us into town to that art gallery Miss Black had told us about before finals. Gina had kept her promise and gave Harold the address to the long low white stucco building with the matte black and dark gray shingles making up the roof.  
I climbed out of the back seat first once we pulled up to the parking space closest to the front door.  
I wondered how my drawing did as I held the door for the two of them: Harold adjusted the lapels on his coat upon entering the small but crowded gallery. We were greeted by a blast of warm air and several display walls plastered with framed works.  
“What is this, watercolor paintings?” he rose his voice over the chatter in the room. I spotted one of the pieces of art right in front of us and the soft tones reminiscent of watercolor.  
“Yes,” I replied.  
“This way—” Gina wove through a small crowd of people before us to an entrance leading to a bright lit room with dark green walls and even more displays. She pointed at two of the drawings on the far side of the room.  
“There we are!” I declared and she hurried across the cold black and white stone floor to our drawings: hers that rich, dark themed colored pencil of herself and Jerry, and mine that delicate hard colored pencil of myself and Chris on the wall perpendicular to it. We had been painted into a corner after all.  
“Second place!” she announced to me, showing me a green ribbon next to her drawing.  
“You got second!” Harold echoed, overjoyed.  
“Oh!” I threw my arms around her. As I kept my chin on her shoulder, I looked at my drawing and the big blue ribbon next to the frame. I gasped at the sight of it; Gina let go of me to have a look for herself.  
“What?” She gaped at it before giving me a playful slap on the arm.  
“What the fuck, you got first prize?” she jeered.  
“I guess?” I almost couldn't believe it. Her drawing was better than mine and had a much nicer mood to it whereas I drew mine right on the spot in my study hall before class one day.  
“That's astonishing, Marie!” Harold congratulated me, setting a hand on my upper back. “I'll be right back—I have to get a drink of water…”  
He stepped away and back into the crowd, thus leaving Gina and me to ourselves.  
“I got first place,” I repeated in disbelief. “Yours was better, though. I mean, you put your heart into that one.”  
“Well,” she began, fetching up a sigh, “you deserve it, though, Marie. You won by the judges' standards.” She shrugged and showed me a small smile. I knew she was disappointed.  
“What's first prize again?” I asked her.  
“I can't remember,” she confessed. “I know it's a rather handsome reward from like the school and from the gallery itself. Like I said, you deserve it after all you and Mark have been through together.”  
“Yeah, but—you're kind of my partner in crime. You should have some of this with me.”  
“Well, I'm here with you right now, basking in the glory of these two ribbons. I mean, I got second place, right after you. You know, that's definitely something to feel proud of. I know Mom would be proud of me.”  
“Jerry would be proud of you, too,” I pointed out.  
“Jerry, too.” She cleared her throat and shifted her weight as she lifted her gaze. “And—” She stopped for a second so as to gaze past me to something behind my back. “—Miss Black wants me. Hang on a second.”  
She dodged past me, which in turn left me there alone in the corner. I turned back to face the framed drawings and sighed through my nose. I thought about taking mine down from the wall and hiding it under something when a woman lingered behind me.  
“These are incredible,” she noted in a New York accent.  
“My best friend worked so hard on this one—” I gestured to the one on my right. “—whereas I just kind of fudged this one.” I pointed at the one on the wall in front of me.  
“That first prize one is yours?” she sounded stunned.  
“Yeah—” I faced her, a tall slim woman with a short bob of black hair and dressed in a tweed pantsuit: I noticed she had a ballpoint pen tucked in the breast pocket of the jacket. She held a small notepad in one hand; I had a feeling about her.  
“Amazing that two students made this,” she remarked, taking out the pen to write something down.  
“Must be a scoop,” I said with a slight snicker.  
“Oh, definitely. I'm put onto assignment to scout out new movements, here on the West Coast in particular.”  
I fluttered my eyelids at her.  
“You're—actually a reporter?” I asked her.  
“Yes. I'm Angeline Belotti—I'm from the New York Times,” she introduced herself, shaking my hand: she had a good, firm grip, firm enough for me to realize I was dealing with a headstrong personality.  
“Marie Newhall. I'm an art student and a zine writer originally from New Mexico.”  
“Zines!” she declared, letting go of my hand. “Been seeing those quite a bit around New York City, around the boroughs in particular. I'm starting to think they're becoming a whole new scene in and of themselves.”  
I shrugged. “Well, I don't know about that,” I confessed. “I'm just a student so I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing. I can't say if there is a scene or not—it's just me and Gina really, to be honest.”  
“I'd like to interview you,” she told me, scribbling something down on the notepad. My heart skipped a beat when she said that.  
“Where and when?” I asked her, feeling my heart skip a couple of beats.  
“Let's see... you said you're from New Mexico?”  
“Yeah. Originally from Albuquerque, now soaking up the sun and the waves in San Diego. I'm also going to be over in Las Cruces later this week to see Stone Temple Pilots.”  
She nodded her head and scribbled down something else. “I'm going to be up in Santa Fe to do another interview on Wednesday, but I'll be more than happy to drive down from there to Las Cruces and book an interview near the venue. I'll have to make some calls, and I can't really say for sure if there will be others there.”  
“Like... more newspapers and reporters and people like that?”  
“Yeah. Ideally, it'd be just you and me, but see—and you heard this from me, too.” She clicked the pen before tucking it into her jacket pocket. She glanced about the room to make sure no one eavesdropped on us. “When there's something new, up and coming, and it's obvious that the people behind it are sincere and serious, the press can't resist. Just a few years ago, the hottest thing around was Warrant and Skid Row. Now, the tides are changing and there will be more press on something else. The whole 'zine' thing? That's something new. And it's just on par with my being a reporter that I have to get it in first—that's why I'm here. But I would love to interview you and—what's your friend's name? Gretchen?”  
“Gina.”  
“Gina! That was it. Hang on—what's your last name again?”  
“Newhall. Her last name is Ribaux. R-I-B-A-U-X. Her father's French Canadian and her mother was Native American and Creole.”  
“Oh, wow. New Orleans?”  
“Yeah, oh yes. She's born and raised there and then relocated here to Long Beach. I'm from Albuquerque, relocated to San Diego.”  
“More on that later, though.” She reached into her jacket pocket again for something, a plain eggshell white business card with typewriter style black writing on the front, and handed it to me. “Here's my card—if you have any questions or comments, give me a ring. If, by any chance we have more of a rapport between each other, you have any concerns, I also have my home phone number on there and you can leave a message because I'm usually out and around New York and the rest of the country.”  
“Thank you,” I told her, holding onto the business card. I knew if I put it into my purse, I could lose the number.  
“I'll see you soon, Marie,” was the last thing she said to me before slipping past me towards the front door of the gallery. I watched her disappear back to the overcast evening before I turned to the small room on the other side of the gallery. I spotted Gina with her glasses resting upon the crown of her head and a small stack of books in both hands; I assumed Miss Black had gone somewhere into the back. I hurried over to her as the butterflies welled up inside of my stomach once again. She lifted her head once I came closer.  
“What's up?” she asked me, setting down the books on the table.  
“You're not gonna believe this,” I started, showing her the business card. “This woman from the New York Times—from New York City—just invited us for an interview when we go see STP over in Las Cruces.”  
“Are you shitting me!” she declared, her mouth agape and her eyes twinkling.  
“No!” We both stared at the business card for a second before turning to each other once again. We threw our arms around each other into a tight embrace and jumped about that little piece of the floor. I couldn't keep the grin from crossing my face.


	44. The Second Sleep Over

I nestled down in the passenger seat next to Jerry as we made our way up the coast line to Long Beach. It was a mere few hours after Gina and I had been let out of school for the next week, and after the art show, we were to head out to Las Cruces to see STP and meet Chris and Lars at any given whim. She had already left San Diego with her father Harold, whom of which told us her stepmother Cassandra was working late that night. I watched Gina breathe a sigh of relief as she slid into the front seat of her dad's car before they drove away back to Long Beach.  
I had to linger behind in San Diego for a little while longer there at the house and wait until Mark left for his apartment over in La Mesa. I have no idea why he felt a need to post up there in the back of the house, especially since I knew he had no desire to at least say “hi” to me. I had called Jerry when I returned home from school that afternoon and then took a seat there on the couch next to the soft green and violet succulents I had brought over to California from Albuquerque, and thought about the scorpion that resided inside of the triad of blue-green ones the week before Mark and I moved away.  
Mrs. Hudson had told it was a sign of the times, in that we were preparing to leave behind our old life and start anew in an unknown place. One thing remained for sure with me and that was the fact I had drifted away from my own brother, the guy who had brought me here to take care of my mom only for him to turn his back on me and feel a need to point a finger at me. Seeing that arachnid in between those smooth leaves made me think of all of the snakes out in the desert. They should’ve slithered onto my head at some point.  
That was the moment in which I began to feel like Medusa, lured into a tight circumstance and then blamed for it. Painted in a corner.  
Jerry arrived right as the fog from the ocean collected and rose over the beaches on the western side of town. He came dressed in his black leather jacket and tight jeans, and with a kiss hello for my mom.  
She hugged me from her wheelchair before we had left, and I asked her if Mark was returning to the house at some point this weekend so she wouldn’t be alone.  
“Yes,” she told me as she let go of me to fix the collar of her shirt. “Yes, he even vowed to come back to the house tomorrow evening. If he doesn’t, I’ll give him a ring.”  
“And I’ll give you a call once we get up to Long Beach,” Jerry vowed, giving her another hug.  
I slung my purse over my shoulder and he carried my overnight bag out to his black car with the bumpy ride and the air conditioner which worked part of the time. It was still a little bit too chilly, anyways.  
And there I was, snuggled down in the warm seat next to him for the next two hours up the coast to my friend’s house. All of the small hamlets and cute little cottages dotting the low hillside ran along to the right of us while the cavernous black ocean gaped along the left side of us.  
“So I should tell you,” he began as we made our way through the lights making up Del Mar and towards the heart of Solana Beach; “last night, while I was camping out at Dave’s place over in La Mesa, I saw your brother. Or at least I thought I did.”  
“You saw Mark? What was he doing?”  
“I have no idea. But he spoke in kind of a brusque manner to me, and I assumed he was just in a hurry.” In the darkness, I saw him take a glimpse over at me.  
“What’s he do for a living?”  
“He’s a culinary student. And yeah, he had finals this week. Yesterday, you said?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Huh. I don’t think he had any yesterday. I do remember he said he had them all on Monday and Tuesday, so I don’t know what could have been running through his mind right then. I don’t even know what he was doing yesterday--like all he told my mom was he needed to make some big phone calls but that was it.”  
I peered over at him and the glow of the streetlights and the lights from the wharf upon his face and his blond hair.  
“I’m so sorry,” was all I could tell him.  
“Why? Why are you sorry?”  
“Because he was rude to you,” I answered.  
“Well, like I said, I assumed he was in a hurry.”  
“But it makes me wonder where he was going, though...” My voice trailed off as I gazed past him to the darkening sky and the blackened ocean. I thought about the day at the beach, when he and I were nestled against each other like a couple of penguins against the cold winds emerging off of the ocean. We were like a pair of thieves driving in the middle of the night, running from trouble and en route to a hideout.  
“Do you think Mark knew who you were?” I asked him.  
“Do I think Mark knew me? I’m not sure. But I introduced myself as a friend to you and Gina, and I was kind to him, but I don’t think he actually... knew me, knew me. Do you know what I mean by that?”  
“Yeah. He doesn’t know you the way Gina and I know you.”  
“Right. And to be honest, I only really paid attention to his behavior to me after I introduced myself.  
The thought of Mark behaving in a rough manner to Jerry made me shudder. Right, and he liked to point the finger at me after he moved over to La Mesa.  
At some point, during the interchange between the Pacific Coast Highway and the Interstate where we remained on the former given the latter would take us into the heart of LA, I felt him touch the top of my thigh. I glanced down at his fingers creeping over my knee and into the space between my thighs. I wanted him to pull over so we could make out there in the car but we were in the midst of a bit of evening time traffic. I had to wait until we reached the Ribaux’s house within range of the beach and the Queen Mary.  
But once we reached the outskirts of Laguna Beach, and Jerry had rolled down the window to catch one final whiff of the ocean air before we came to a denser part of the coastline, I felt my nipples harden inside of the cups of my bra. He wanted it, even if we were still on the road.  
I did the same for him, placing both of my hands on his thigh. In the dim light, his eyes darted over to me before returning to the freeway before us. I fumbled around the belt holding up his jeans. His tongue slithered out of his mouth and along the top of his bottom lip.  
“What’re you doin’,” he demanded at a rapid pace. “What’chu doin’, girl.”  
“What do you think?” I retorted, tugging at the end of the belt to take it out of the buckle.  
“Marie--Marie, I’m going to cause an accident,” he insisted.  
“Nah.”  
“Oh--”  
I unfastened his jeans and reached down into his underwear for that healthy sized sausage of a dick. I gripped onto his length: in the dim light, I watched him purse his lips and then stick out his tongue at me.  
“Marie--Marie--not here--please--” he sputtered.  
“I know you want it,” I stated right into his ear.  
He grunted as I pulsated my fingers along his shaft. The head was in there somewhere. I had grown to be a lot smarter compared to our first evening together.  
“Hang on--hang on, we’re almost at Laguna--take your hand out.”  
“Why? Other people should see us doing this.”  
In the darkness, I watched him gape at such a suggestion.  
“When I meet up with Lars, I’m going to tell him that you are one open-minded little kitten,” he assured me. “But seriously, take your hand out of my pants. There’s traffic coming up.”  
“Coming?” I retorted, tugging my hand out of his pants.  
“Coming.” He chuckled at that; I was positive he kept his jeans unfastened for the rest of the ride up to Long Beach and the little neighborhood by the waterfront to play with me, because a deep warmth had crossed my face by the time we were ten miles outside of town. I tried to roll down the window but the handle refused to budge out of its place there on the inside of the door.  
“Yeah, I don’t think I told you this--that window doesn’t roll down.”  
“Oh, damn it,” I gasped.  
“What’s the matter? Hot?”  
“Yes.”  
He snickered at that.  
“Don’t laugh!” I scoffed.  
“Hey, you put your hands on me. You little minx you.”  
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hot,” I teased him.  
“I think I should say the same thing to you, baby girl.” He flashed me a wink as we proceeded onward to the neighborhood into the heart of Long Beach. We arrived at the house by a quarter to eight o’clock, just in time to join Harold and Gina for dinner. Because it wasn’t technically her place to live at anymore, and Cassandra had converted her old bedroom to a trophy and board room, Gina told Jerry and me we had to sleep in the guest room that night.  
“There’s two beds in there so neither of us will have to take the couch,” she pointed out as she shoveled a couple more bites of shrimp scampi, which Harold had made just for us as a welcome to the house.  
I was eager to bunk in the same bed as Jerry once the time came for us to call it a night.  
“Gosh, how exciting is tomorrow,” Harold noted as he turned out the light in the living room.  
“Oh, yeah, you ladies have the art show in the gallery near here,” Jerry recalled.  
“Not just any old art show,” I pointed out as Gina ambled down the hall to the guest room; “a show ran by the university system here in California. If either of us at least get an acknowledgement, that’ll be something to put forth on our career paths as artists.”  
“It’ll put Painted in a Corner further into the spotlight, too,” Gina added at the end of the hall.  
“It’ll do wonders for our zine, too, right!”  
Once the house was dark, we made our way to our room, a small but cozy bedroom with a twin bed tucked in the corner adjacent to the door, and another twin bed with a white side railing pressed against the opposite wall and under the window. Jerry had set my things right before the closet door and next to Gina’s suitcase.  
“So which bed?” she asked us.  
“I’ll take this one,” I gestured to the one beneath the window.  
“Which means you and I have this cute little one here,” Gina giggled while flashing Jerry a smirk.  
Once I had changed my clothes, out of my top, my bra, and my shorts, and into nothing more than a camisole and my underwear, I climbed underneath the soft clean white sheets and the pillowy comforter, and lay my head down on the silken pillow. I watched Jerry climb into the bed opposite me, and then Gina turned out the overhead light, which in turn engulfed the room in darkness. I kept my eyes open so they could adjust to the dim ambient light filtering in from the piers, just a few blocks from there.  
I was about to fall asleep when I felt something crawl underneath the covers next to me; Gina started to breathe heavy so I knew she had fallen asleep. His fingers crept over the side of my thigh and my hip: I felt him finger the edge of the waistband of my panties. I knew what he wanted.  
I gave him a soft groan inside of my throat, soft enough so as to not wake her. He lingered closer to my face.  
“When you fall asleep, I'll be gone,” he whispered to me.  
“To where?” I breathed into his face. He pressed his lips to mine, a delicate kiss as gentle and silky as cotton candy: I let my hand slide up his hip and onto his side.  
“The place where you and I belong,” he whispered in between kisses. “Your neck of the woods.”  
“Albuquerque?”  
“Yes. And then Las Cruces.” He kissed me again and then I held onto him. His fingers crept in between my thighs towards my crotch. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to stay with me, even with Gina laying there right across from us. I wanted Jerry for myself, and he and I both knew it.  
“My neck of the woods,” I repeated as I slid my hand down to his ass and gave him a gentle squeeze; “my neck--”  
He pressed his lips to the middle of my throat and then buried his face into my chest. I tilted my head back to take in the softness of his hair against my bare skin; if only it was the two of us again, I would have taken off my bra so he could feel me all the way once again. But all I could do was hold him as we fell asleep in each other’s arms right within mere moments.


	45. The Next Night Alone

Spring break wasn’t for another month but I was already feeling the onset of the season. All the fog and the low clouds had overstayed their visit here in Southern California. I missed the snow from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, all of the snuggly feelings of staying in during the coldest of nights where I would be wrapped up in my soft blankets in my old bed and with a mug of hot cocoa. The desert always had such a morbid feeling to it when the days fell chilly, and the painted sands and petroglyphs outside of town coated with frost and the snakes and the scorpions were nowhere to be found. I always pictured old frosted bones strewn about the ground and the sagebrush, and old wilted wood, baked and forlorn by the sun; then, once I grew older, I imagined someone like Lars or Chris would arrive, riding up on a black horse and wrapped in a cloak comprising of layers of black lace.  
San Diego never gave the same feeling, even when the rains came in at any given point.  
But by the first day of March, I was ready for the springtime. I often caught a whiff of the fresh lilac in bloom and I thought of Jerry. I was a flower ready to bloom for him, to spread the petals and give myself to him.  
But then there was Gina. My best friend, my partner in crime, my co-author, and my girl friend. She was in the dark about all of my feelings for Jerry. I knew he had told me to keep it under wraps, just between the two of us.  
On one hand, I wanted to tell her the truth, to fess up to her that I had wedged myself between the two of them. She needed to know the truth, especially if we were to continue writing and compiling our art zine, and ultimately to maintain our friendship.  
But on the other hand, therein felt something truly erotic about keeping it a secret from her. I had a side to me that she knew nothing about, and it would have to take something huge like one of us rising to fame and fortune in order for someone to dig up the truth because I wasn’t about to tell a soul. I spent an evening with Jerry and she knew nothing about it. No one knew anything about it in fact. But then there was Lars, and there was Chris, and therein lay a possibility that Jerry would have a change of heart and run back to Gina. I need not worry about it but there was already that chance.  
On this particular late afternoon, I found myself in the middle of a school week in the middle of March, around the time of the equinox and I was caught up in the rain near the bus stop. It was because of my standing there under the awning solo when I felt a familiar itch from the first day of living here: the feeling of wanting to be around another person. Mark had left the house last week so as to return to the apartment in La Mesa. I had that nagging feeling again, the one that told me he wanted nothing to do with me or Mom anymore. The last time I had that feeling was the last time Dad called from yet another business trip to Chicago, and Mark had left the house to tend to “something important” over on the outskirts of town. I should have listened to Dave, too.  
On top of the rain, I had had a full day of school on this particular Wednesday, and I was in no mood to do any kind of homework or anything of the like. I stumbled into my room and set down my book bag on the floor next to the edge of the door frame, and continued on to the edge of the bed to take off my shoes.  
Once I had stripped off my socks, I paused for a second to contemplate what to do next. The rain pattered on the roof overhead, and I wanted to feel something against my skin. I stood to my feet and peeled off my shirt. I glanced down at my muffin top spilling a bit over the top of my jeans. Jerry wanted this skin, this flesh, this body; twin stretch marks stared back at me from the rims of my belly button, like a pair of parentheses. I touched my skin, in all of its softness and plushness.  
Maybe I was getting too fat. Maybe Mark was right about me. But then again, I thought about the way in which Jerry touched me, how he could scarcely keep his hands off of me on that night alone with him. I kept my bra on as I headed out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. I was alone in the house, anyways.  
I entered the kitchen and opened the cupboard door closest to me for a glass.  
I was about to pour myself some water out of the fridge when the phone rang. I lunged to the cordless on the wall.  
“Hello?”  
“Hey, babe,” his voice was like the auditory equivalent of black velvet.  
“Oh. Hi.” I couldn’t resist the grin from crossing my face. I slipped my free thumb into the belt loop of my jeans. “I—wasn’t expecting you to call. What’s up?”  
“I’m over in La Mesa right now,” answered Jerry. “Hanging out with Dave for a little bit until the STP show.”  
I chuckled at that.  
“That’s not for another month, though,” I pointed out, rubbing my belly with my free hand.  
“Well, he’s got a pretty comfy sofa. I like to sleep on it, probably more than I like to sleep on Chris’ sofa.”  
“How’s his?”  
“Quite good. Not as comfy as Dave’s, though. Especially the one in his second house up in San Francisco. I don’t know how he can afford that place, though. Surprised he can even keep the lights on in this place.” He cleared his throat, and then there was a bit of a rustling noise on his end.  
“So... are you by yourself?” he asked me in a low voice.  
“I am. I just got home and took my shoes off—and my top.”  
“You took your top off?”  
“Well, it is raining.”  
“True. It is pretty wet out there. If you know what I mean.”  
I scoffed at him.  
“What?”  
“You gotta do that now?” I demanded.  
“Do what?”  
“Act all randy and horn dog like?”  
“I’m just in kind of a mood. I haven’t seen Gina in a while after all.”  
“We’re sort of... up to our eyeballs in schoolwork at the moment,” I explained, giving my belly another gentle rub. “We don’t really have time for anything else. But, another month, we’ll be off for spring break. Did Gina tell you what’s going on on the last Friday night, literally the night we get out of school?”  
“No. What’s going on then?”  
“We have like an art show in a gallery up in Long Beach. The show itself is on Saturday but I’ll be going up there to spend the night with Gina and her dad and stepmom. We entered some drawings into it to represent our school—all the universities in Southern California are going to be there, and we’re doing it in for San Diego.”  
“Oh, wicked!”  
“If we win, we’ll get quite the handsome prize plus a little bit of something to go on our permanent record. Not that that last thing means shit, though.”  
He burst out laughing.  
“I like that. So... are you in the kitchen, or—where are you?”  
“I’m in the kitchen. Why? You want me to go somewhere more private?”  
“Yeah. You know. So that way when someone walks in, they won’t walk in you getting all thirsty with me.”  
“Thirsty—thirsty. I did come in here for a drink of water after all.” Using my free hand, I picked up my glass and headed for the fridge. Once it was filled halfway, I returned down the hallway to my room. I closed the door part of the way, took a gulp of water, and then I lay down on my side on top of the bed.  
“Okay,” I told him. “Now, I’m in my room.”  
“Good. ‘Cause the first thing I wanna ask you is what date do you get off of?”  
“April... twelfth? I think? I’ll have to check the date, but I think that’s what it is.”  
That rustling sound on his end happened again and then he cleared his throat.  
“I’m going to call you the night before you get off of school,” he said in a husky voice, “and then I’ll come from Dave’s house to come pick you up.”  
I nibbled on my bottom lip. I was going to spend two hours by myself with him, in his car, on the way to Long Beach.  
“You—wanna come pick me up?”  
“Yeah. I’ll be going out to Las Cruces that weekend, you know to meet up with Rob and Dean for rehearsals and whatnot.”  
“That’s an awful long drive,” I remarked.  
“Well, yeah. But that’s why I’m coming for you. I’ll come for you from here in La Mesa, and I’ll come so quickly that you won’t know it.”  
“I do not like the amount of times you actually said the word ‘come’,” I scoffed, wagging my finger even though I knew he couldn’t see me.”  
“I thought you wanted me to do it again for you, though,” he stated, hurt. “You don’t want me to do it again?”  
“We shall see,” I continued, pressing my free hand to my hip. “I don’t know if we will have time again.”  
“When I see you, there will be time for me to come closer to you,” he assured me. “Trust me, baby girl.”  
“Wait a minute,” I stopped him right in his tracks. “‘When’? What do you mean ‘when’?”  
“Hell yeah, when. When and will, for sure.”  
“Maybe we can invite Gina, Lars, and Chris along, too.”  
He hesitated. “Scandalous. Maybe Lars and Chris, but Gina, no way.”  
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “You just want me to do a little lap dance just for you, don’t you.”  
“More than a lap dance, babe,” he whispered. “I want you to have a seat on my lap and fondle me down.”  
I swallowed at the sound of those words whispering right into my ear. I held still with what I heard next: the sound of the front door closing on the front side of the house, and I pursed my lips together. Mark’s voice floated down the hall, followed by Mom’s voice. This was not good. I wanted to tell Jerry I needed to go but I was already in it too deep.  
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me some more until you reach my belt. Just—reach down my pants and hold on tight.”  
“All the way off?” I asked in a soft voice.  
“If you want. We can just do it with you grabbing onto my dick and fondling me until your hands get tired.”  
“Who says my hands will get tired?”  
“Ah, you wanna go the distance, don’t you?”  
Meanwhile, Mark said something. I hoped he stayed there at the front of the house as Jerry continued.  
“I’ll let you go the distance. Go the distance for me, baby. Go comatose for me, baby. Go nuts as you grab my nuts and give me all that you’ve got.”  
“Give it to you like how I did at the mention of the word ‘Hole’?”  
“Exactly. Exactly! And I would like to put a little something in that very hole of yours, too. Something elongated, if you know what I mean—” Something cut him off, and the phone line fell silent.  
“Jerry?” I called into the mouthpiece. “Jerry, are you there?”  
Another voice followed suit.  
“This number cannot be reached at this time. Please try again later.” All I could assume was Dave had neglected to pay his phone bill; I hung up the phone right as I heard the front door close again, which meant Mark and Mom had left the house. I knew there was food in the kitchen but I disliked the fact that they left without finding out if I was home, and that I had no means of contacting Jerry for the time being.  
I disliked the fact I was spending this night alone.


	46. The Tickets

Jerry had fallen asleep at about four o’clock in my bed, and when he and I had returned from the beach. I couldn’t take the feeling of sand all around my butt so once he had nodded off, I ducked into the bathroom to strip off my clothes, have a quick seat, and then duck into the shower. The warm clean water caressed over my head, my shoulders, my chest, and down my body to my feet. I turned around and stooped over.  
I closed my eyes as the water washed over me. Gina entered my mind, especially when I remembered she was sleeping down the hall in Mark’s bedroom. This was the second time I had wedged myself in between her and Jerry, and I was thinking about finding out about Lars and Chris if and when I got the opportunity. At least this time she had fallen asleep herself but I had my worry that she could find out   
What was I doing. What was thinking?  
I’m a whore. I’m like a stripper, about to dry off and then take off my clothes again for this strange man in my bed. And yet, even with the thought of my best friend finding out about the two of us, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I couldn’t afford to care.  
I opened my eyes at the sight of the grains of sand flooding down onto the floor of the tub. I nibbled on my bottom lip as I let it all rinse away and down the drain. Once I could feel the sand wash away, I reached for the shampoo; and then I followed it up with the soap.  
Soon, I was out of the shower and back in my shorts and my bare chest. I crossed back the hallway to my room and dropped my sandy shorts into the hamper at the foot of my bed. Jerry had rolled over onto his stomach so he had buried his face right into the top of the pillow.  
I lay my forearm over my chest as I crept towards the bed. It was early in the morning but I had that pervading fear that Gina could awaken and walk down the hall, and come into the room at any given second.  
I slipped under the covers, right next to Jerry: he let out a quiet snore once I snuggled up close to his body. I rolled onto my side and put my arm around his chest. On one hand, that voice still lingered in the back of my mind telling me I had done a terrible thing, having an affair and betraying my best friend. This was it: our future, my future, the reputation with Painted in a Corner, was now thrown up in the air, and it was all because I couldn’t control my own vagina. But then again, I liked the rush, the danger, the possibility of getting caught for having an affair with Jerry behind closed doors. Our zine was built on scandal after all: he even told me that in his letter back to me.  
I fell asleep spooning him, but no sooner had I fallen asleep when I awoke to the aroma of coffee filtering into the bedroom from the kitchen. That could have been the sole sign that either Gina was awake or Mark had come home for a morning.  
I opened my eyes to the smooth curvature of Jerry’s shoulder and upper arm. I thought of lifting my arm up from his chest so as to caress him but I needn’t risk it this time around. But my other hand started to tingle from holding the bottom side of my chest; instead, I opened my lips and blew onto the rim of his ear. He stirred in my arms but never awoke.  
“Jerry,” I whispered. “Jerry—Jerry—“  
He groaned inside of his throat.  
“Jerry—“ I repeated, “—Jerry, Marie needs her hand right now—“   
I slid my hand out from underneath him and shook it about before my face. I wiggled my fingers to get the blood flowing again. I rolled onto my back and listened to Gina and Mom talking about something in the kitchen for a moment. Jerry still hadn’t woken up at that point, and so I rolled out of bed and onto the carpet. Keeping my arm lain over my chest, I searched about the room for a top of some sort, and spotted a little pink one hanging up in the closet.  
Even though Jerry and I had had dinner and then the walk on the beach, I felt winded and weathered, as if I had just run a marathon. I tugged the camisole over my chest when a knock on the door startled me.  
“Marie?” It was Gina.  
“Yes?” I called.  
“Are you awake?”  
I let the bottom hem of my shirt fall onto my waist as I headed to the door. I slipped out of the bedroom faster than she could give me a reply.  
“What’s up?” I greeted her with haste and a toss of the hair.  
“I—just came here to tell you breakfast is ready, courtesy of your mom and me,” she answered with reluctance. She peeked over her glasses at me and raised an eyebrow. “Where’s Jerry?”  
“I think he might still be sleeping,” I said.  
“He’s not in the living room—even though his shirt’s on the couch and he’s not in your brother’s room, either.”  
I shrugged and shook my head.  
“I haven’t seen him,” I told her. She sighed.  
“Where’s my Jer Bear,” she called down the hall. I almost burst out laughing at that as she strode down the hall in search of him. But instead I doubled back to the kitchen to greet Mom good morning and fetch myself a plate of breakfast. She sat there at the table in her wheelchair with a large white china mug in one hand: she peered up from her crossword puzzle in the newspaper once I entered the room and gray morning sunlight filtered into the front of the house.  
“Hi, Marie,” she said to me as part of her greeting. I gave her a hug before hovering right next to her there at the table.  
“How’s the coffee this morning?” I asked her.  
“Quite good. Gina made it.”  
“Uh, Marie?”  
I lifted my gaze at Gina herself as she strode down the hall into the kitchen and with a perplexed look on her face.  
“Now, mind you, I think he just did it—but Jerry is in your bed,” she announced; my heart skipped several beats until I realized what she had said to me.  
“He just—what makes you think he just did it?”  
“He looked like he dove right into your bed face first and ass over teakettle, and the covers are still intact, too.”  
“Oh,” I gasped. “I mean, oh, what the hell even?”  
She shrugged as Mom started laughing at the whole thing.  
“I dunno—but it’s kinda funny, though.”  
“Should I go wake him up?” I suggested.  
“Might as well, I mean it is your bed and your room after all.” I ducked out of there and back down the hall to my room. Once I was in there, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. That was close; but then I turned my attention to my bed and Jerry, laying the exact way in which she had described: all I could see was the curvature of his upper back and the plumes of soft blond hair upon his shoulders. I crept over to him to wake him for real this time.  
“Jer Bear—“ I whispered to him in a playful manner, stroking his back and leaning in closer to his ear. “—Jer Bear—“  
“Mmm—hm?”  
“Jerry—“ I leaned in for a kiss on his cheek. “Jerry, your breakfast is getting cold.”  
I finally caught a glimpse of a groan from his throat.  
“Jerry? Jerry.”  
He rolled onto his side first and then onto his back. His eyes fluttered open, and then he reached up to rub the remaining sleep out of them.  
“Breakfast already?” His voice crackled out from between his lips, and he rubbed his eyes again, this time with the bases of his hands. “What time is it?”  
I glanced over at my little desk clock at the small neon green hands.  
“About eight twenty,” I replied.  
“I only slept four hours? God...”  
He lifted himself into an upright position.  
“Also, please don’t call me Jer Bear,” he insisted, leaning back against the headboard.  
“Why’s that?” I asked him, pressing my hands to my hips.  
“My mom used to call me that, and—I guess you found out, too: Gina calls me that, too.”  
“So you don’t want me to whip it out?”  
“Well—unless it’s going to be serious between us, I don’t wanna hear it, though.”  
I took a seat on the edge of the bed and examined the solemn expression on his face.  
“What happened,” I asked him in a hushed voice. He set down his fork before lifting his gaze to me.  
“My mom died of cancer five years ago,” he confessed to me. “So did my grandmother. Six months apart.”  
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I gasped, bringing a hand to my mouth.  
“No, no, it’s okay. You didn’t know, but now that you do, like I said, unless it’s getting serious between the two of us, I don’t really want to hear it save for out of Gina’s mouth.”  
He swung his legs out from underneath the covers and planted his feet on the carpet. I examined his skinny shins and his slender thighs: I had no clue if or when I would inch closer to those legs again. Perhaps last night, or rather four hours ago was the last time I would do such a thing with him. He glanced about the room.  
“Where’s my shirt?”  
“On the couch. I’d give it and your pants a good wash to get the sand out. Oh! And if Mom or Gina ask you, you went swimming last night and you fell in, that’s why your clothes smell like the beach.”  
“And I slept here,” he remarked with a frown.  
“No biggie—I have to change those sheets anyways.”  
He stood to his feet and ambled out of the bedroom to the bathroom, which gave me the chance to change out my sheets and take them to the laundry room at the back of the house. But once I had slipped them into the washing machine, I could feel my hands and feet shaking from the lack of food in my stomach. I slipped past the bathroom door because I knew Jerry had to be in there giving his hair a good rinse. What the hell were we thinking that sex on the beach was a good idea in such a risky situation as an affair?  
I took my seat next to Mom when Gina spoke again.  
“Is he coming?”  
“Oh yeah, he just needed to put some water on his face.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
No sooner had the words left her lips when he emerged from the hallway, his blond hair dripping wet and the whole top half of his body bare. I felt my face grow warm at the sheer sight of him.  
“Has anyone seen my shirt?” he asked again, but I forgave him for forgetting what I had told him before.  
“In the—living room,” Gina stammered. He turned the corner and disappeared into the nest room over. I let out a quiet sigh as I struggled to keep my composure in front of Mom and Gina. And then he spoke again.  
“Little package came for Marie and Gina both,” he announced, returning to the room with an off-white envelope in hand and still not having put his shirt back on. He handed it to me as I felt the warmth bloom back into my face.  
“What is it?” Mom inquiringly asked. I turned it over to open it at the back, and revealed three rectangular pieces of paper.  
“Tickets to Nine Inch Nails in September!” I exclaimed; I picked a small note out from the inside of the envelope. “Courtesy of Dave and Lars!”  
“I assume that third one is for Jerry,” Gina pointed out.  
“Oh, yeah, I quit going to concerts a few years ago,” Mom answered with a shrug, a wistful smile, and a glimpse down at her wheelchair.  
Jerry returned to the room with the shirt over his head, and then he tugged it down over his body. I thought about changing out of my shorts into jeans, but I knew what he wanted. I hoped he and I would have a little something before we met up with Dave and Lars, up in the Bay Area for Nine Inch Nails. In my mind, it was official between the two of us. My world was built on scandalous obsession, albeit in a playful manner. I was obsessed, and Jerry had me pegged from that point onward. But it would be about a month before I saw him again.


	47. The Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t know if I’ll make home tonight,  
> but I know I can swim under the Tahitian moon.”  
> -”Tahitian Moon”, Porno for Pyros

I had flown back to San Diego from Albuquerque to meet up with Rob and Dean as they had driven out there to check up on the house--too kind of them to do such a notion. They offered to drive me back out to town, but I had already paid for the plane ticket and thus, I flew back to California, by myself. At least I was alone and not with Mark this time.  
When we drove from Albuquerque out to San Diego, we had been caught up in a big, out of season rainstorm in the Phoenix area and while I was calm the whole entire time, I swore there would come a point in which he would sustain a heart attack. He panicked when the rain transformed into graupel for a moment, because the stones fell onto the crevices and lines of the front hood and the edges of the windows, and they were the size of frozen peas. But I remember thinking, “Jesus, Mark, we’re from the Southwest. We’ve been exposed to the monsoons since we were both babies--we’re used to this.” I think it had to do with it being so early in the year, but it made the ride through most of Arizona a drag because he remained on edge the entire way.  
When we took the road from the California state line to San Diego, all the way through El Centro, we skirted along the border. The whole time he almost had an anxiety attack there because neither of us had a passport on us. At one point, when we drove through El Centro, I turned to him feeling exhausted by his antics.  
“Mark, unless we make a wrong turn--and I doubt it given how foolproof this freeway is--we’re not going to accidentally end up in Mexico.”  
He retorted something to me, but I admittedly tuned it out of my mind.  
Thus, I flew back to San Diego solo from the home in the desert. We shall meet again, Albuquerque. I promise.  
But when I landed at the airport at about six o’clock in the evening, I was surprised to not find Gina and her father Harold waiting to pick me up, but rather I spotted my man in the night, Jerry. Standing there in his hands stuffed into the pockets of his black leather coat, wrapped in dark denim jeans, and docked with large black leather boots upon his feet. He tossed his blond hair back from his neck and greeted me with a sly grin.  
“Jerry! What’re you doing here?” I asked him as part of my greeting.  
“Gina and her dad had to change their plans,” he explained, reaching out to help me with my luggage even though I just had the one little black bag that Mrs. Hudson knitted for me and my purse. “Besides I offered to take you home.”  
I swallowed and handed him my knit bag before we headed out to his car parked in the second row from the large sliding doors. A light drizzle fell onto our heads on the walk to the two front doors.  
“It’ll be a little slippery, methinks,” he said aloud as he unlocked the door.  
“Slippery when wet and you’ve got the key in the door lock like that?” I called before opening the door.  
“Exactly!” he declared with a laugh. I slid into the passenger seat, and he followed suit into the driver’s seat. We began the drive back to my mom’s house; it felt so good to be with Jerry again. I flashed back on our first evening together, where Gina left the room and in turn leaving us there all alone with nothing more than ourselves. I will forever refer to that room as “the nest”, even if it’s no longer there; especially if it’s no longer there in the future. I was eager to return to my mom’s house when I noticed he made a wrong turn onto the Ninety-Four freeway and we began to head towards the beaches.  
“Wait, where are you going?” I asked him.  
“I want to make a quick stop here at the ocean before I go back up to Seattle,” he explained. “It’s alright--it’s not like we’re gonna be taking a weird little dirt road down to Tijuana or anything like that.”  
I swallowed and nodded my head as we pressed on through the low hills and towards downtown and the vast gray sheet that was the ocean. The drizzle waned once we reached the heart of downtown San Diego and one of the exits leading to Little Italy.  
“I figured, since it’s six o’clock in the evening, you haven’t eaten anything,” he remarked as we rolled down Eighth Street towards the rising skyline.  
“I haven’t, either,” I confessed; within time, he turned onto India Street and the very heart of Little Italy, that quaint little neighborhood filled with low bright colored shops and cafes and made me tap into the rather lush part of my personality. In the back of my mind lurked that voice that haunted me during our little evening together, the voice that told me I should demand Jerry to take me home, back to my mom, but at that point, he had already taken a spot on the curb before a tiny bright cafe with little blue tables outside on the patio.  
And once again, it felt as though he was seducing me as he bought me linguine with giant meatballs as big as my fist. He even made a note of that as he offered to feed me one of them.  
“These balls are like a fist...” He picked one up with the silvery fork; “one that I could slip right into your clit with ease.”  
“Jerry!” I hissed at him and he chuckled at me. I took a bite and savored the spices and the luscious ground beef--such bliss! The voice insisted that it felt wrong sitting there, dining with him there in Little Italy because of his relationship with Gina, but I continued. He was kind to me and I had taken up the offer by a mere chance. I was indeed hungry after all.  
One thing I couldn’t understand was why Gina and Harold had pulled out with such haste and without a phone call to the house first. Unless it was a last minute affair, it made no sense to me as I contemplated licking the tomato sauce off of the surface of the plate.  
“I’m almost inclined to buy us dessert,” he confessed, taking a sip of ice water.  
“Gelato, perhaps?” I suggested, wiping my mouth with the napkin.  
“If you want,” he replied with a shrug and a devilish smirk. “It’s cheap-o, and I can do it.”  
“I’d like chocolate,” I told him.  
“Good choice.” And without another word, we were helped to twin mounds of creamy luscious chocolate gelato, some of the best I had ever had in my life. Once we finished up and he paid the bill, we headed back outside right as night began to fall and the marine layer broke apart enough to reveal the thin sliver of a moon hanging in the sky over the horizon. Jerry led me back to his car when he stuffed the key into his coat pocket.  
“I say we take a little walk down to the water,” he suggested, and he held out his arm for me. We took a stroll down the street, past a couple other cafes and boutiques, all of which were intimately lit for the evening, and then we turned to the left down another side street, one that headed to the wharf and the beaches. The sea breeze blew through my hair and I caught a whiff of the salt and the ocean. Within time, the navy ships docked in the harbor entered my view: the golden lights lining the sides bathed the pier with enough light for us by the time we reached the sandy paths leading down to the water.  
“Go past these ships here,” he coaxed me towards the other side of the pier. “How many ships could ship fitter fit if a shit fitter could fit shits?”  
“How many shits are we talking?” I played along. “Two?”  
“Nah, I was thinking six.”  
“Six shits?”  
“Couldn’t give two shits about six shits.” And I burst out laughing once we reached a narrow sandy path down to the water: the tides were about to come in the form of a deafening wall of white noise as I led him down to the shoreline. Using the golden light from the naval ships, and keeping one hand out in front of me in the case of the sands softening and the darkness only reaching a head all around us. I felt him grip onto my shoulder as the path gave way to those rich white sands I was still growing acquainted with on beach days.  
“Let us walk forth and talk,” he declared right into my ear over the roar of the ocean waves to our left. At one point, the landscape gave way so the light from the navy ships cast a soft glow over the crown of his blond hair. It was that point I could see the blackness of the ocean next to us, and I realized he and I were truly alone at that time. For all any outsiders knew, we were two lovers having a walk alone together.  
In fact, it dawned on me that we were indeed two lovers having a walk alone together. And Gina had no knowledge of such a thing between us.  
“I should tell you, Marie,” he began, his voice right in my ear so as to not have the tides drown him out. “I was feeling pretty nervous in the airport back there.”  
“Why is that?” I asked, doing the same thing for him.  
“Well because Gina has no idea about the two of us, and yet she and her dad asked me to come get you. I remember thinking ‘shit, this is close.’“  
“I didn’t tell you this,” I confessed right into his ear, “but a couple of weeks ago--” I shivered from the cold sea breeze, and he put his arm around me. “--a couple of weeks ago, she got alone with me in the library at school and told me she thinks you might be cheating on her. And I told her I didn’t know anything about it.”  
“Good,” he replied. “She doesn’t need to know about it. I hate to do that to her, and I know you do, too...” He grunted from stepping on a rather high mound of sand. “...but if nothing, this is just a little fling between the two of us and nothing more.”  
“Nothing more, nothing less.”  
“Exactl--” He didn’t get to finish because he fell onto his side and tugged me down with him. He landed part of the way onto his back and I landed right on his chest: the pasta and the gelato I had had earlier wasn’t helping matters with my stomach. But I planted my hands into the sand on either side of his shoulders and lifted myself off of him to look right into his face and those deep eyes. His skin glowed with the faint afterglow from the naval lights; tendrils of my hair dangled down into his face.  
He hesitated, and then he reached up into the back of my head and tugged me back down into his face. His lips pressed to mine, and he ran his fingers through my hair before I jerked my head back from his face.  
“I don’t like this beach,” he confessed.  
“Yeah, me, neither,” I added, “too military.”  
I climbed off of him and he lifted himself off of the sands. We left that beach for a better one down outside of National City, and we picked up where we left off once I kept him from pinching my ass all the way back to Little Italy to fetch the car.  
That time he was on top at first, and then once no one was looking our way, I straddled his hips and rode with the rhythm of the waves.  
It was so wrong. But it was so right. It felt right. I was doing the right thing being here with Jerry on the sands under the setting moon.


	48. The Library

I had my final study hall before mid terms in the school library, but the sole thing I had to study for that term was my history class. I had had my share of school and classes that I hardly any time to draw for Painted in a Corner or so much as pick up a guitar like I had promised Dean. I still had no idea if he was going to buy me a new guitar or not, and Gina still hadn't said anything to me about learning bass so we could form a band of our own. We still hadn't come up with a name of our own as of yet. All I knew was our aliases and author names: Medusa for me and Persephone for her. If Jerry planned on joining us, he took the alias of Poseidon in honor of his being born under the sign of the fishes.  
On this particular chilly morning in early March, I hoisted my book bag over my shoulder and yanked my hood over my head before stepping out to the rain. A light drizzle was falling from the marine layer overhead: I was still trying to acquaint myself with all of this cloud cover emerged from the ocean in the mornings. Indeed, the first week we lived there in San Diego, I had to actually convince myself that we weren't in New Mexico anymore. I thought about Chris and Ben up in Seattle, and if it was raining in droves up there.  
I considered bringing up the possibility of moving up to Seattle with Gina and Jerry, given I foresaw the music scene up there burgeoning forth and making some serious headway in the world. It was a rather good sized, tight woven scene up there, compared to the almost scattered one here in San Diego: surely some band up there had to have their foot in the door of one of the big record labels or with the press somewhere else. If not Chris and Ben and Soundgarden, or Jerry and Alice in Chains, then who?  
The soles of my boots echoed over the wet concrete as I strolled past the white stucco halls and towards the one on the far side of the campus, the one with the library. Despite the midterms coming within the next couple of days, I had the image of Medusa and Persephone itching at me with each and every step. I needed to draw, and I needed to sit in a remote part of the library in order to coax it out of me and onto paper. On top of everything else, I had to be here anyways given I couldn't afford a history textbook even with my grant. I wondered if Mark knew what I was up to as I pushed open the glass doors, only to be greeted by a wave of warm air from the heating vents on the ceiling overhead.  
I tugged the hood off of my head before taking a glance about the vast room; one other person stood in one of the aisles on the far side of the room, but all of the tables stood vacant. Except for that one person, I had the library all to myself. But I strolled all the way towards the far left corner of the room because I knew if anyone else came inside to escape the rain or study for something, I still kept my privacy. The world need not know about Medusa and Persephone as of yet.  
As I took my seat, I thought about our aliases. They were our identities, our pen names, and they belonged to us. I pictured the two of us becoming the next big girl band in the world, the center piece of the “girl riot” as Jerry put it in his letter back to me. Perhaps there could be a way in which our fans, whomever they may be, taking a peek behind the curtain at us, or at least expressing that desire. What would happen to our school careers? What would happen to our families? Surely, something glorious would happen and the two of us had all of the goods to give back to our parents but not without us losing something first. The aliases were separate from our true identities, but something told me we needed a fail safe of some sort, a way out in the case of something bad happening to either of us. I hoped Gina was at school that day so I could tell her without having to track her down on campus or have to wait until the next shared class.  
I took a seat at the table and set my bag down on the floor next to my feet. I stooped over to open the top flap, and then take out my sketchbook. I reached into the front pocket for my set of nice drawing pencils and set it down on the table. History could wait for a bit. I had business to do.  
I opened the book to a clean page; I took out one of the harder graphites to sketch them down first before adding shading.  
I drew our heads first, followed by the eyes, then the noses, the lips, the necks; I gave myself the serpentine shapes in lieu of hair atop the crown of my head. She had the luxurious waves of hair interlaced with leaves to symbolize the onset of spring before she left the Underworld.  
I picked out one of the harder graphites for the first bit of shading all around us and around our bodies. I made sure every scale on the snakes' bodies was pristine, and I gave the pomegranate seeds around her chest a light shading so they would appear realistic upon showing to Gina. Then the idea crossed my mind.  
This was our final fail safe. My drawing in my sketchbook and then put in a safe place so no one would know about it. This would have to go back to the house in Albuquerque when I went back there in a week's time to meet up with Rob and Dean again. I had already met up with them to make sure things were alright at the house because I had told them about that damn pilot light, but I had to do it again to fetch some of my things. I hoped I would forget about this sketchbook for a while as I added the final touches and signed my name.  
I leaned back in my chair and breathed a quiet sigh through my nose. I peered up at the bookshelves to find the other person had already gone, which in turn left me alone here in the library. In fact, the librarian was nowhere to be found. I turned my attention to the clock on the wall on my left: two thirty in the afternoon. Too late for lunch, too early to return home.  
I fetched up another sigh as I drummed my fingers on the edge of the table. Time to study for real this time. I thought about Chris and Ben and if either of them received my letters; I wondered what Ben thought of me in particular given he was the married man.  
I closed the book and slipped it back into my book bag, and climbed to my feet to delve around for a textbook. I crossed the floor to the shelves on the right side of the room to where the textbooks had been neatly organized and plastered together like a series of fine polished bricks, just waiting to be cracked open and copied from onto sheets of notebook paper. I found the whole notion of studying from a book ridiculous given I learned better with visuals and drawings, but Miss Mormino insisted on reading before the exam.  
I halted before the history and scanned the shelves for the one for my level and my class. I reached out for the top of the spine and tugged back with the tips of my index and middle fingers.  
“Good choice, but we all know studying is lame,” Gina's voice cut through the silence like a knife. She startled me so much that I leapt forward and almost dropped the textbook onto the floor. I whirled around to see her peeking in between the shelf level with my head and the tops of the books there, her bright rimmed glasses gleamed in the fluorescent lights over our heads, and her jet black hair and tops of her slicker sleeves glistened with fallen drops of drizzle.  
“Jesus, Gina,” I breathed out in a hushed voice; I pressed my hand to my chest.  
“Was that too much?”  
“I just about dropped a big ass textbook onto my foot. Gosh, how'd even you know I was in here?”  
“I came in here to check out a book on painting and I saw you crossing the floor over here.” She pointed to my right. “So I just decided to sneak up on you.” She showed me a little smirk and added a slight chuckle to it.  
“And you did a damn good job of it, too,” I scoffed.  
She then cleared her throat and adjusted the lapels on her raincoat. “So how's Medusa on this fine afternoon we have here?”  
“Eh, I'm alright. Kind of—pondering our future.”  
The impish smirk disappeared and her expression turned grave.  
“Like... how so?”  
“Well—here. Lemme come over there so you're not talking through books—” I ambled down to the end of the aisle and rounded the bookshelf to meet up with her: she pushed herself off of the textbooks so as to face me straight on.  
“Earlier, before you came in and just about scared the shit out of me,” I began once I neared her, “I was thinking that if something was to happen to us, say—our zine Painted in a Corner gets a bunch of attention for its ties to Stone Temple Pilots and to Metallica and part of the Seattle scene, and we become the part of some kind of new scene indicative of the 1990s, we should have a way out.”  
“Okay. What'd you have in mind?”  
“I don't know, that's why I brought it up to you. I mean, if we're going to be best friends, we should be able to talk about hard things like that.” I ran the tip of my tongue along the inside of my teeth once the words left my lips because I knew I had participated in an affair with Jerry and I vowed to him not to tell her about that night. I was one to talk.  
“You know, because I think,” I continued, stuffing my hands into my coat pockets, “if we get big—say we become renowned for our art and our compiling for something as trivial as a zine, people are going to want to get to know us better. They're going to want to know the story behind the names, Medusa and Persephone.”  
“Well… if things get serious,” she suggested at a reluctant pace; I watched her reach to the shelf on my right for a rather small book wedged between a massive engineering textbook and a book of Irish literature; “like say, things get serious between me and Jerry, and if he keeps his word and takes us out to Las Cruces to see STP and we do all kinds of good things out there like he promised… I say that's the day we drop the names.”  
“Drop the names?” I echoed.  
“Yeah. We distance ourselves from them and they become nothing more than indicative of our old selves… if people ask us any questions about it, we can just say 'oh, that was something we threw around for a while but we gave up on it in favor of something completely different.” She glanced down at the book she had taken from the shelf, a short guide book on how to write poetry.  
“I feel like I should be modeling for some company somewhere,” she cracked, holding the book up to the side of her head with her left hand and smoothing over the front cover with her right.  
“You'd make a hell of a model,” I pointed out.  
“So would you,” she encouraged me.  
“Are you kidding? No agency would want this.” I patted the outside of my coat.  
“Oh, come on, Marie. You're a total babe. A vixen. An absolute fox. In fact—” She peered behind her for a brief moment before turning back to me; she held the book close to her chest. “—you wanna know a secret?”  
“Yeah, of course.”  
She swallowed and adjusted the arm of her glasses with her thumb and index finger.  
“I—think of kissing you,” she confessed in a low voice.  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. Like if—things don't work out with me and Jerry, or if you don't find someone for yourself, we should be in lesbians with each other. I mean... I kind of do see you as a sister. That is, if you're okay with that.”  
I swallowed at the sound of that. Sure, I liked Gina like my friend, my best friend and my partner in crime, and in the past six months, I had been seeing her as something akin to a sister. She was the sister I never had in New Mexico, however I had no idea about that next step. If things backfired with our boys, we should turn to one another.  
“You know, to be honest—I'm open to it. And, 'if things don't work out with you and Jerry'?”  
“Yeah. You're—kind of the first person I'm telling this to. I think—this is just a hunch, anyways—I think he might be seeing someone else.”  
I knitted my eyebrows at that, even though I was guilty as charged.  
“What makes you think that?” I asked her.  
“I'm not sure. But I feel it. Like, I get this nagging feeling in my chest that he's got his eye on some other person and it's—kind of obnoxious—”  
“I—wouldn't know the first thing about that,” I covered for myself.  
“—because it's like 'who? Who would do that? And why would Jerry do such a thing to me?'”  
“Oh! Before I forget, I want to ask you this,” I began, pressing my hands together at the fingers.  
“Go on.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.  
“How do you feel...” I chose my words with care because I knew I had interrupted her train of thought, “about moving to Seattle at some point?”  
“Like—when?” Her face lit up and she fluttered her eyelashes at me. “After we graduate?”  
“Eh, I was thinking more like in the next couple of years.”  
“So after we graduate,” she concluded.  
“Not necessarily. We can always transfer up there.”  
“That is true.”  
“I mean, I know, it's kind of a pain in the butt, though,” I pointed out. “I mean, you and I just got here to San Diego and everything.”  
“But Cassandra wants nothing more than to kick me out of the house—”  
“Really?” I was stunned by the sound of that; and I thought everyone liked Gina.  
“Yeah. Oh, yes. Come over for dinner some weekend, Marie. You'll see what I mean. My dad loves her because she reminds him of Mom, but she wants nothing to do with me. And she's never even met you but she doesn't like you, either.”  
“How can you not like someone you've never even met?” I wondered aloud.  
“That's what I've been asking. I mean, there is a room in the house in Long Beach for me, but she's the kind of person who'll throw a dirty look at you if you even so much as breathe if she has an issue with you.”  
“What do you think her problem is?”  
“I don't know. My dad says it's probably because I'm an art student and she never really tapped into that side of her so she probably sees me as nothing more than a free loader, but I'm going off of speculation here.”  
“Well, I'll have to meet her because I wouldn't know, to be honest.”  
She frowned as she slipped the book back onto the shelf.  
“Don't you have to study?” she reminded me with that mischievous smirk returning once again.  
“Ehhhh—you wanna join me so I'm not going at it alone?” I suggested.  
“I don't see why not,” she replied with a shrug of the shoulders.  
And with that, we returned to the shelf in front of us for that heavy textbook, still jutting out from the shelf far enough for me to swipe off of the metallic shelf. We ambled to the table together and I plunked open the book to the page Miss Mormino assigned for us to read. Gina's frequent commentary made an otherwise boring hour fun, and I didn't want to lose that from the secret of having an affair with Jerry.  
I hoped to see him soon enough so we could have a word alone, at least before spring break when we traveled out to Las Cruces.


	49. The House in Albuquerque

“So we’re just going to check up on this place and then we’ll bounce back to San Diego,” Rob was telling me as the airport came into view. A bank of memories flooded back to me upon view of the runways and the radar tower: all those afternoons of taking the bus home from school felt so distant and yet so close by at the same time. We turned the corner and I was back all at once right then.  
“Down here, Marie?” he called back to me, gesturing out of Dean’s side of the windshield.  
“Yes,” I replied, and we rolled past a small cluster of scraggly Joshua trees before turning onto Hermosa Drive, the street Mark and I grew up on.  
The house we used to live in was this cute little white stucco place with black and blue trimming on the gutters and around the windows. I used to have my succulents out on the front porch next to Mom’s stubby little yucca plant in a brick red flower pot, and we always brought the plants in during the summer time because of the scorpions and the snakes around the area. Whenever someone came to the house from down the street, either down from Mrs. Hudson’s house or at the end of the block, they were treated to a winding walkway from either corner of the yard. Tiny shrubs of thistle lined the edge of the front yard; short Joshua trees stood amongst the sand, loose gravel, and patches of grass making up the yard. In other words, no matter where one came onto our property from the street or from the driveway, there was an easy path to the front step.  
The front door gave way to the foyer and the hall that stretched all the way to the back of the house. On the left stood the living room with the leather couch and the recliners; on the right stood the dining room and a spare room which we never assigned a proper name to; on the other side of the living room stood the cool kitchen of black stone and dark wood--during the summer time, I always went in there to hang out whenever it proved to be too hot in my room or at the front of the house.  
All the way towards the back of the house were our rooms, first up before the living room was my parents’ bedroom. Across the hall stood mine, which bathed in the morning sun no matter what time of year, and it was because of this, I had my window open almost all year round. I had my twin bed covered with the blanket Mrs. Hudson had made for me pointed in the direction of the window and my heavy wooden dresser. My small desk was tucked in the far corner with the spindly black stool. Even though my bed pointed in the direction of the sunrise, I had my closet right there next to me when I woke up in the morning.  
Mark’s bedroom was across the hallway, and where my room took the power of the sun at first, he always took the fullest power of the day once the sun hung low over the petroglyphs and the mountains to the west of here. Maybe that was why Gina joked about hanging out with Jerry in there if they ever came out here with me together because it would grow to be rather torrid in there. I found the whole idea hilarious especially what Mark had done to Mom and me after we had moved out to San Diego.  
Down the hall from my room was the bathroom and then the laundry room. The back yard meanwhile consisted of a square of grass and pure white gravel underneath a series of Joshua trees, oak trees, and two tall palms, both of them with kinks near the top from all of the high winds out here. This house was OURS, and my room was MINE, and neither of us ever cared about the proximity to the airport because we were close enough to know about the noise but far away enough to know there was very little noise to go about.  
We pulled up to the curb, right next to the mailbox and the empty space making up the driveway now. I missed my dad--things weren’t the same after he and Mom split and he was spending more time back East and in the Midwest for work. The move was one of those things.  
I slipped out of the back seat and onto the sidewalk before Rob switched off the engine. I rushed up walkway to the front step. Dad told me he had left the door unlocked for us to check on the pilot light and to fetch some things out of there that I was unable to take with me to San Diego: I pushed open the front door and a curtain of cool crisp air left over from the snows and the lingering winter time. I dared not hesitate to run to the closet at the end of the hallway to check on the furnace and that damn faulty pilot light.  
I opened the door to come face to face with the ivory white furnace. I ducked down with one hand on the back of my neck to keep my hair out of the way, and took a peek into the slit. The flame had gone out at one point, but I need not worry about it right now. It was during the summer time when I worried about it staying on and turning the house into a complete and utter oven.  
“So this is the infamous house,” Gina called from the gaping doorway.  
I lifted myself back into an upright position to see her hanging her jacket up on the hook next to the door.  
“Yep, this is the house in Albuquerque that I keep throwing out to you every so often, my friend,” I retorted as I closed the closet door. Rob entered the doorway behind her and removed his sunglasses.  
“How’s that pilot light?” he called out to me.  
“Out. I need not worry about it. Oh, and Gina!”  
She stopped in the entryway to the living room and showed me her raised eyebrows.  
“Do you have your--?” I gestured to my shoulders and my upper arms. She paused, and then she gasped. She ducked past Rob and Dean and back out to the car to fetch her jacket.  
“So what do you want to get?” Dean asked me, pressing his hands to his hips.  
“Just my old book bag and some things for school,” I told him, crossing the hall. “I also came here just to check on the pilot light ‘cause it’s--weird.”  
“Remember she was telling about that?” Rob pointed out to him as I slipped into my bedroom.  
I wanted to collapse onto my bed and feel the soft blanket which Mrs. Hudson had knitted for me, but alas I could not. I scooped up my black book bag from the side of the desk: I opened the top flap to find all of my old pens and pencils, and my favorite markers, and good art pencils were still in their places from the time we left here. That was when something caught my eye right on the top of my desk. I recognized that journal from the week before Mom and Dad told Mark and me they were divorcing.  
Rob and Dean talked about something at the front of the house; without thinking, I picked the little black journal off of the desk and stuffed it into the book bag. I doubled back out to the hall right as Gina re-entered the house with her rock n’ roll jacket folded up and tucked underneath her arm. I was meaning to ask her what she wanted to do with it here in my parents’ house. However, she had already scurried down the hall to my room with it before any words could leave my lips.  
A frigid desert breeze swept over the front yard and the Joshua trees as I made my way down the walkway towards the car. I rounded the rear fender to open the trunk and nestled my book bag in between mine and Gina’s luggage. I closed the trunk lid to gaze on at the house, the only house I really knew and felt at home. I was going to leave it again here in a couple of minutes time.  
I sighed as I returned back around the edge of the trunk to the back door and slipped back into the back seat. Once I had closed the door, something caught my eye. I glanced down at the small, thin sliver of white jutting out from underneath the seat. I peered out the window first to find Rob and Dean were chatting about something on the front step; Gina was still in the house, probably stashing her jacket in my closet. I reached in between legs for the object and tugged out the small booklet, the one I had remembered from the first few weeks I grew to know the DeLeo brothers. I recognized the front cover, that typewriter font written in black ink. I remembered that one variant cover with the rhinestones and the glitter that Gina and I had compiled together, but there was this.  
There was something else underneath it. I reached down again for the top of the magazine, shoved underneath the seat. A copy of The Rocket! The copy I swiped from Mark, too! I need not go through that again with him should I see him again.  
I flashed back on that thought I had had during the Pearl Jam concert: what if Gina and I became famous for this given our established fan base in San Diego? And what if I was caught having an affair with Jerry? I had to rid of this cover, this single page of the first edition of Painted in a Corner.  
I peered out the window again to make sure Rob, Dean, and Gina were still out of sight. Quickly, I tore the sheet of paper into fine strips and shoved them into the first page of The Rocket before I shoved the whole thing underneath the front passenger seat. I hoped Dean wouldn’t find it there as I straightened myself upright there in the back seat.  
Gina rounded the hood of the car with an adjust of the lapels of her jacket from the chilly breeze. She opened the door across from me and plopped inside of the back seat.  
“God--I dunno how y’all stood it out here,” she remarked, rubbing her upper arms, “brrrr.”  
I shrugged in response. “Just like how... I dunno how you guys tolerated all of the hurricanes and the nasty-ass humidity down in Nawlin’s,” I cracked. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. I knew she hated that nickname but I couldn’t help it.  
“And by the way, I tucked my jacket in your closet if that’s alright.”  
“Of course,” I assured her. “What I wanna know is why here? At the house?”  
“Cassandra--my stepmom--is kind of a... er...”  
“A stickler?” I guessed.  
“Anti-expression,” she finished.  
“What?” I was stunned.  
“It’s true,” she insisted. “Really, come to the house in Long Beach at some point and meet her. You’ll see what I mean.”  
Rob and Dean returned to the car right then to climb back into the front seats. And I had no idea if they locked the door but a part of me felt rest assured they did as we pulled away from the curb and headed back out of Albuquerque en route to San Diego.


	50. The Pearl Jam Show

We had arrived in Santa Fe at about two o'clock in the afternoon, about an hour before the doors opened. Rob and Dean wanted us to come see this new band which called themselves Pearl Jam because they both came to a consensus that they and Stone Temple Pilots could run away in the music business together. They were also playing in my home territory, and I needed to head out to my parents' house in Albuquerque anyway to make sure everything was still in order while Dad left on assignment in Illinois.  
It was a blustery, frigid day in the middle of February, the Saturday after Valentine's Day, and the day following a torrential rain from the Great Plains; and I wanted to be away from the fact Jerry and Gina had a weekend together the week before. I almost couldn't stomach the very thought, whenever I pictured that weekend before, where I had walked out of my last class that previous Friday and watched his car pull up to the curb at the front of the campus. That was nearly a week ago, and I still recalled seeing the excited look upon her face as she climbed into the passenger seat next to him. To think he had touched me a mere two and a half months before those two days.  
I stared out the window at the skyline I still knew so well after all these years. Every so often caught a trace of the infamous mechanical hum emanating out from Taos, but I had grown acquainted with it from the first time we drove here from Albuquerque. But hum or none, New Mexico remained my home away from my new home of San Diego, no matter what happened. I was so obsessed with the fact that I was a New Mexican that even living in California wouldn't change that fact.  
As we climbed out of the car, the cold winter wind washed over us. I shut the door and closed my jacket as I hurried around the trunk to meet up with Gina and Rob. I shivered from the base of my spine all the way up to the nape of my neck as the wind continued to wrap around us.  
Dean took the tickets out of his jeans pocket once we arrived to the sheet of glass protecting the will call booth from the cold dry wind; Gina huddled close to me to keep warm. It amazed me that it had rained here the night before because I could feel my lips drying out to the most parched and dried of feeling before we filed into the tiny auditorium.  
The front lobby had a lush red carpet and smoked glass mirrors lining the walls; over our heads loomed the elaborate ivory white ceiling lined with gold.  
“You ladies want something to drink before we go inside?” Rob offered us.  
“I really would like some water,” I pleaded, running the tips of my fingers along my bottom lip, which had dried out from the cold: the back of my throat felt dry and parched, and the sight of the vendors on either side of the room selling drinks and T-shirts only brought on more of that thirst. It made no sense: I was just here in the desert not long ago. But Rob was kind enough to buy me a glass of cool water to ease the burgeoning pain in the back of my throat and along my mouth. Meanwhile, every time Gina ran her fingers through her hair, I caught the sound of static upon her head and I wished I had a balloon with me so as to stick it to the crown of her head.  
Soon we filed into the auditorium, to a quartet of comfortable looking seats underneath the ostentatious red and gold decoration lining the bottom of the balcony overhead. Gina and Dean talked about something while Rob stayed on his feet, watching everyone enter the room from either of the double door entrances behind us. I sipped my water and thought about my zine. To think the two of us had been working on Painted in a Corner for almost five months at that point and we already had a decent sized fan base courtesy of these two men on either side of us and their established fan base. I already told a couple of my old friends in Albuquerque about it and thus I knew Gina and I had some clout here in the Southwest United States, albeit a rather exaggerated amount.  
But then I thought about what Rob and Dean had told us about Pearl Jam, and I remembered my ties to Jerry, Lars, Dave, and Soundgarden. If STP ever took off in conjunction with Pearl Jam and whatever was churning forth up in the Seattle area, perhaps we would run with it, too. Indeed, I pictured Gina and myself heading places with our little art project.  
Rob adjusted the lapels on his coat as he strode down the end of the row to the aisle. I wondered what would happen to Gina and me if Painted in a Corner grew to be a household name in the vein of our predecessors, artists and writers of yesteryear. I flashed back on the art show she and I had enlisted back in Long Beach courtesy of the school, and I started to ask questions there. I had so many questions but no one to ask about them to, but at that point, the lights of the stage turned down low, beholding the centerpiece of the black wooden stage before a small drum set; Rob returned to the seat to my left as the crowd erupted into applause.  
They played a short set of about five songs, but it was five songs which etched into my memory: the singer had long mousy hair dangled down in his face, over his nose and cheekbones, and he wore a sweater of blue and black plaid flannel over a plain white T-shirt and short denim pants down to his knees despite the cold hanging over Albuquerque that day. I examined closer to the large black boots on his feet, and I wondered if those were the same boots Chris had because from our spot there underneath the balcony, they appeared identical to his, down to the laces. I had no idea for sure, but that was what I got for paying such close attention to Chris' features.  
The guitarists both had long straight hair down to their shoulders and their upper backs: the one on the right had a much more prominent brow and thick eyebrows while the one on the left could perhaps pass off as a girl had I not known better. The one on the right wore a Led Zeppelin shirt and a light blue knit sweater tied around his waist at the sleeves, while the one on the left had on a plain black shirt over faded jeans with holes torn at the knees; the bassist meanwhile wore an olive green button down shirt over black jeans, a floppy blue and white striped hat, and at least one ring on each finger of both hands. I could hardly see the drummer from where we were seated in the auditorium but I could make out his wavy blond hair upon his head every time he turned to each side to tap on one of the cymbals or on the big bass drum to his side.  
The singer had an interesting voice, one I had never heard before. I thought back to how some of STP's early audience members compared Scott with this guy here, but it made no sense to me. They had different tones and he had more power and more of a poetic feeling whereas Scott was all about performing. Either way, I was mesmerized by this man, this mysterious man with the microphone.  
They finished their short set with a song which they called “Alive”. During the chorus, I caught some voices floating up from the audience. The second time around, Gina caught on with it and followed by myself, Rob, and Dean. The ending of the song carried the prowess of the guitarist on the right while the singer merely drifted towards the back of the set. I wanted to see more of him, but he had already receded back into the shadows of the rear side of the stage before anyone could wring out another word or note.  
The four of us stood to our feet in ovation of this band, this band who called themselves Pearl Jam hailing from Jerry, Chris, and Ben's neck of the woods, from the heart of Seattle.  
Within time, we filed back out to the cold overcast afternoon with our hands in our pockets and our shoulders knitted up towards our ears against the wind.  
“So that was the band you guys keep getting compared to,” Gina shouted over the howling winds.  
“Yeah, I know right?” Dean peered over at us with a sly grin. Rob unlocked the driver's side door first and, once he had opened the door, he reached down to press the button to unlock the other doors for us. We climbed inside and closed the doors to let the noise of the Pearl Jam show and the winter winds settle away outside of the car.  
“I couldn't even hear the similarities,” I confessed, breaking the silence, “you guys have your own thing, to be honest.” But similar to one another or not, I liked them and even with those five songs now echoing throughout my mind, Rob and Dean's words rang true and I couldn't help but feel that mine and Gina's fate was sealed. We hung there in silence as Rob fired up the car again and we rolled to the driveway of the parking lot; we paused for a moment to wait for traffic to clear up for us; soon we turned onto the pavement.  
“So where should we head to next?” asked Gina.  
“Marie wanted to go to the house,” Rob recalled, taking a glimpse into the rear view mirror.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right!” She then turned her head to me. “I have my jacket tucked in between our things in the trunk.”  
“Why'd do you even bring that thing out here anyway?” I asked her as we rolled onto the street.  
“I'll explain it later,” she assured me as I returned my attention to the two of them in the front seats.  
“Albuquerque isn't too far away, either,” Dean declared as we made the green light at the intersection before the freeway.  
“Right, and on top of that, we're just not too far from the house anyways,” I pointed out to them.  
“Okay so when we get close, have at it, Miss Marie,” Rob told me as he turned the car onto the freeway.


	51. The Two Weeks Off

Gina and I had a little more than two weeks off for winter break: we were released from school at two o'clock on the winter solstice, that Friday before Christmas Eve and the winter term would resume a couple of days after New Year's Day. Harold offered to drive me home back to my mom's house given the rains had already coalesced around San Diego and the California coast: since we had entered the winter season, the darkness started to sink in over us once the day was done. I bowed my head as I headed out of our ceramics class to protect the crown of my head from the big fat droplets of rain falling onto me. They were so big in fact that the gutters and on the sidewalk all around me erupted into a continuous drone that drowned out any voices that ever floated my way.  
I spotted Harold's car posted up on the curb, and I lifted my hand over the top of my head but it was futile as the rain came down even harder over me. I flung open the rear door on the passenger side to stick my hand bag holding two pencils and an eraser into the middle seat, then followed by myself in the back seat there. He glanced over his shoulder at me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I brushed bit of the rain water off of the top of my head.  
“Gina's coming,” I assured him as I struggled to catch my breath.  
Within a matter of seconds, the car door in front of me opened and Gina slid into the seat next to him.  
“Ohhh, my God,” she gasped, yanking the hood off of her head.  
“Coming down hard, honey?” cracked Harold as he started up the car.  
“God—I swear if we aren't careful, Marie and I would be like a couple of turkeys.”  
The headlights of the car shone over the pavement in front of us: the rain showered down on us in the form of sheets as I watched him push down on the parking lever. We rolled forward down the street, through the massive puddles, and back to the house. I thought about Jerry and if he kept his word and would arrive at the house soon after the darkness of the first day of winter overcame the southern most part of California.  
Harold drove through the droves of cold rain back to my mom's house: once I recognized the wheelchair ramp upon the steep steps of the porch, the same Mark had crafted with haste for Mom, butterflies danced inside of my stomach. Jerry had to be here, or at least nearby. At least Mark's car was gone from the driveway, which meant it would be Mom and me for the time being.  
“Thank you, Harold,” I told him as he and Gina turned their heads to take one final glimpse at me before I saw them again in two weeks time. I bowed my head as I climbed out of the back seat and hurried up to the porch and the front door with my hand bag slung over my shoulder. I jiggled the doorknob to find someone had locked the door; I crouched down to the rock next to the doormat and lifted it to find the spare key laying there. I unlocked the one in the doorknob and pushed it open before the rain fell even harder onto the porch and left larger puddles behind me there in the front yard.  
I stepped into the house and pressed my back against the door panels. I breathed a sigh of relief once I realized I was alone in the house. Time to relax for a little bit before Mom arrives home from wherever she had gone to that afternoon.

*****************************

Indeed, Jerry had run back to Long Beach before the rains came in so as to make sure Gina and Harold had arrived in one piece. I was eager to see him again as Mark returned to the house with Mom and he refused to tell me where they had gone. Add to this, when he left the house to return to La Mesa, I asked her if he took her out to eat, she shook her head.  
“I'm afraid he didn't, sweetie,” she confessed, “I'm hungry, too.”  
Thus, I rolled up my sleeves and prepared a large pot of penne and tomato sauce for the both of us. If this whole thing with Mark was going to continue for the next two weeks, Jerry could stay here until Gina and I returned to school in January for all I cared. This was probably the one dark spot on our moving out here to California: my own brother having flipped a switch all because of that one afternoon in June where I thought of the idea of Painted in a Corner. Mom and I sat down at the table nestled in the dining room with the red ceramic pot of pasta and some green beans for a quiet dinner together. Nothing more, nothing less, and there was nothing I couldn't ask more of.  
Once she and I had cleared the table, and she assisted me in the dishes, it was almost nine o'clock at that point. She ran her fingers through her reddish brown hair before opening her arms to me.  
“Thank you, sweetie—I'm going to go to bed now.”  
“Good night, Mama—” I told her, stooping down to embrace her there in her wheelchair. I straightened myself up and pressed my back against the wall so she could roll out of the kitchen and down the hall to her bedroom. I thought about running down the hall to help her but a knock on the door stopped me in my tracks. I threw the dish towel over my shoulder before rushing to the front door. I opened the door to let in a rush of frigid wet evening air and the sight of him standing there in the doorway with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his leather jacket.  
“Baby doll,” Jerry greeted me.  
“Mr. Cantrell,” I lowered my voice to a husky croak. He lunged forward to put his arms around me and a kiss on my lips. The dish towel slid off of my shoulder but I could care less at that point. I staggered back but he caught me with his arms around my waist. I opened my eyes to see him close the door with his foot. I yanked my head back to look at him in the face.  
“Make yourself comfortable in my room,” I told him. “Let me turn the lights off.”  
“Gladly,” he whispered and flashed me a wink. He let go of me and headed down the hall to my bedroom, which allowed me to double back to the kitchen to hang the towel back onto the handle of the oven door and switch off the overhead lights. The whole front of the house engulfed in darkness, but I crept down to my room, and turned off the hall light along the way. I entered my room, where Jerry had turned on the lamp to let the two of us see what we were doing; he had taken off his coat and slung it over the back of my desk chair. He kicked off his sneakers and, once I stood there in the doorway, he stripped off his jeans. I ducked into the room and peeled off my top and chucked it onto the top of my dresser. I kicked off my jeans right as he crawled under the blankets.  
I followed suit and, when the covers rested upon my hips and my legs, I lingered over his body in a push up position. Jerry reached up to push back my hair from my shoulders and my chest: I flicked my head back to show him my neck, and then I collapsed onto my side right next to him. He rolled onto his side to face me straight on: he pressed a hand to the side of my face.  
“I'm so glad you're here,” I whispered to him.  
“Well, good. Because it's gonna be you and me for a while.” I inched closer to him to feel his warmth; the blankets around us felt like a nest.  
“I'm taking you ladies to go see STP,” he assured me with a light brush of the lips.  
“Wait a minute, I thought Rob and Dean were taking us to the STP show,” I corrected him, shifting my head back from his face. “They were able to get Gina and me front row seats.”  
“That was actually courtesy of me,” he pointed out.  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. It's true. I wouldn't lie to you, baby doll—” He pressed his lips to mine once more before speaking again. “If anything, Rob and Dean wanna take you out to Santa Fe in—February, I think it is? To go see one of our own, one of the bands from Seattle.”  
“Really? What are they called?”  
“Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam as in—what I'm about to give out here if we go any further. If you know what I mean.”  
I gazed on at him in the golden lamp light, at those deep solemn eyes obscured underneath a moment of shadow cast by his prominent brow. I did know what he meant by that: I ran my fingers through the smooth strands of soft blond hair on the side of his head as I brought my lips back to his for another kiss. His flesh was warm and his fingers were curious. It was the first night together all over again.  
I relaxed as I let him run his hands down my back and onto my hip. The tips of his fingers pulsated on my butt and then upon the back of my thigh; his lips felt like plush silk upon against my own. When he let go to kiss my neck and my throat, I gasped for a breath. He kept his right hip bone close to mine: I could feel the top of his jeans sliding down his hips to reveal the creamy smooth skin underneath. I opened my mouth as he kissed the indentations on my chest. I let out a silent cry as he pressed his lips to the curvature making up my right breast, followed by my nipple.  
I rolled onto my back so he could kiss all the way down my belly to my hip and my crotch. I lay there as I felt him peel my underwear down my thighs.  
This was like the first night, except there was this, this feeling of his tongue slithering about the inside of my thighs and then my lips. I could feel him tickling my clit.  
“Tickle me, Jerry,” I begged. “Please—”  
I gasped as he ran the pads of his fingers over the curvature of my clit: it was as if someone sent a shock up my spine and all throughout my body. I gasped again, which I followed with a soft moan. He fingered me as well as let his tongue move about inside of my lips. He pleasured me, and he would do it every other night for the next two weeks off, always when Mark left the house and after Mom went off to bed. Early on the last morning of winter break, I lay in bed on my back, the only piece of fabric on my body being my underwear. My eyelids stayed closed as he slid out of bed to dress and kiss me good bye for now.  
“Remember what I said the other night,” he whispered into my face; I opened my eyes enough to make out the blurry shape of his blond head and sleek slender shoulders under the padded leather, “and our first night together: Gina can't know about us.”  
“Of course, baby,” I vowed, closing my eyes again. He locked his lips onto mine once more.  
“What happens here stays here,” he whispered in a voice so light he may as well have breathed it.  
“What happens here stays here—” I echoed; I kept my eyes closed, but I knew at that point he had already stepped out of the room.


	52. The Visitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Evil witch, cast her spell, seducing you,  
> she'll take you to the very depths of hell.  
> Cannot move, no eyes to see, a statue now,  
> for all eternity Medusa laughs at you  
> and you're her slave!”  
> -Medusa, Anthrax

The first time I invited Gina over to the house was on the second week of the fall term, and after she broke the news to me. It was quite the bombshell, especially since she and I had met each other in the mere first week there in the library at school. To think she dated the guy whom I wondered would write back to me at any time and did on that very afternoon. I thought about introducing her to Mark but I decided not to as we walked home together from the bus stop. The warmth of the autumnal sun washed over us from the top of the massive fog bank looming over the cold dark ocean. She and I had both wrapped ourselves up in our sweaters and we huddled together against the chilly breeze. Once in a while, I took a glimpse over her and the purple horn rimmed glasses shining in the afternoon sunlight: strands of her straight jet black hair brushed over her face with almost every gust. Such perfect straight hair compared to my rusty ringlets.  
“So here's the house.” I held out my hand to my mom's house on the left side of the street, the one with the hand made ramp over the front steps. We halted at the end of the walkway with our hands stuffed into our coat pockets.  
“What's with the—?” she began.  
“My brother made that for her.”  
“Oh, that was kind of him.”  
Little did she know, once he put it together, he high tailed it out of the neighborhood and to his own place over in La Mesa without a good bye or another single iota of help for me or for her.  
I led Gina to the narrow space of steps onto the porch. I stepped into the house first, and right as Mom rolled across the foyer with a dish of tuna casserole leftover from last night. Her face lit up as she saw me walk into the house.  
“There she is!” she declared; she lowered her gaze to Gina behind me. “Why, hello.”  
“Mom, this is Gina,” I introduced her once we shut the door behind us. “Gina from New Orleans.”  
“Oh, yeah! Marie's talked about you a bit.”  
“It's good to meet you, Mrs. Newhall,” Gina politely replied, shaking her hand.  
“Oh, please, call me Miss N,” she insisted, clasping onto the sides of the dish in her lap. “You girls got any homework?”  
“Just a short essay, a little bit of reading, and studies for our drawing class,” I answered, setting down my two textbooks and my hand bag on the bench next to the door before peeling off my sweater. I needed to make a trip out to Albuquerque at some point because I swore I left my old book bag at the house out there.  
“What's that? It smells good,” Gina gestured to the dish in Mom's lap.  
“Tuna casserole from last night. There's a large dish of it in the kitchen so help yourselves if you'd like some.”  
“Mom doesn't put weird stuff in her casseroles,” I added, fixing my hair. “It's basically egg noodles with cream of celery, chunks of tuna, and then covered in grated cheese. It's perfect on a chilly day like this, too.”  
I led her into the kitchen for a dish of said casserole, one for the each of us. Before Gina took her dish out of the microwave, a knock on the door caught my attention. I ambled back out to the hallway in time for Mom to roll up to the front door; I caught up with her so she didn't have to open it. We were greeted by that rush from the cool wind riding with a bit of moisture from the ocean and the sight of Jerry himself standing there on the step, the longest strands of his soft blond hair billowing out from the side of his head and his hands tucked in the pockets of his fitted leather jacket. His face was more gaunt than I had originally pictured, and his eyes stared back at me from underneath that prominent edgy brow.  
“Hi, Jerry,” I greeted him with a smirk and a few skipped heartbeats. Mom wheeled back so he could enter the house.  
“God, it's cold out there,” he remarked, shaking his head and removing his hands from his pockets. Gina entered the room from my right with a small plate of tuna casserole in hand.  
“Jerry! What are you doing here?” She was stunned.  
“Well, I called your dad and he said you weren't home,” he explained, “and I remembered you telling me about your being friends with Marie here. So I recalled the address and came here from Dave's place in La Mesa.”  
“Dave?” asked Gina.  
“Dave Mustaine,” I clarified. “I met him—shortly after I met Rob and Dean.”  
“Great musician and good friend of me and Lars,” Jerry added with a wink.  
“Em, what's up?” Gina pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with the tip of her finger.  
“Just wanted to see if I could take you out to dinner,” he told her, and I nibbled on my bottom lip at the sound of that, “but since I'm here right now, I don't think it'd fair if I didn't ask all three of you ladies out for dinner.”  
“Tonight?” asked Mom, rolling about in a semicircle to face him straight on.  
“Whatever's convenient,” he replied with a shrug, stripping off his jacket and revealing his black Soundgarden shirt.  
“Well, we were just having leftovers,” I showed him the dish in my hand. “Might be a bit heavy before a bite of dinner, but tuna casserole.”  
He turned to Mom. “Mind if I have some?” he asked her, hanging up his coat on the hook next to the front door.  
“Go right ahead, dear,” she answered with a warm smile. “There's plenty in the kitchen.” He disappeared into the next room, which in turn left the three of us there in the foyer.  
“That was out of the blue,” Mom noted, keeping the smile on her face: she lifted her hands so as to return to the room in front of us. “Out of the blue but always welcome.”  
Gina and I followed her to the small dining room table with our dishes. It wasn't much but I always loved her cooking, especially when I believed I would miss it when she and my dad divorced and she moved out here to California. Soon Jerry joined us at the table, taking his seat next to Gina and across from me. I swore with every bite he took, he flashed me a glimpse with his brow accentuating his eyes. Even when he spoke to Gina, he showed me a look. And it wasn't until we finished our second helpings when I felt as though he was seducing me.  
I shook the thought away. Impossible. He and Gina had a picture perfect relationship as far as I could tell: the sweet bespectacled girl next door from Louisiana with the blond guitarist, and I was the odd third wheel who lived with her disabled mom because her older brother couldn't be bothered to do anything else useful. But he had a glimmer in his eye, one that reeled me in even as I stepped away from the table to clean off my plate.  
“I think I should head back to my little place,” Gina announced from the next room.  
“Are you sure?” asked Mom.  
“Yeah, I've got stuff to do. It was so nice meeting you, though.”  
“Would you like a ride?” I heard Jerry offer over the trickle of water from the faucet in front of me. I didn't hear her response but I did feel her arms wrap around my waist.  
“I'll see ya at school,” she said into my ear.  
“Yeah, I'll see ya,” I replied to her over my shoulder, “don't stay up too late.”  
She let go of me and headed back out of the door. Soon, I finished the bit of dishes on the counter and then returned to my room to change my clothes.  
At that point, the sun had disappeared behind the fog bank over the ocean, which in turn cast an evening shadow over the valley. I stopped in front of the linen closet door and opened it for a clean towel; before I could head into the bathroom with it over my shoulder, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and faced him towering in front of me, still with that twinkle in his eye. He parted his lips and lunged forward to me. He shoved his tongue right into my mouth, right in between my teeth. I groaned inside of my throat and jerked my head back from him.  
“Jerry—Jerry, what are you doing?” I demanded, pushing him back from me.  
“Was that too much?” he asked, startled. I peered over my shoulder to make sure we were alone for real. Gina had already left and I had no idea where Mom had headed to, but for all I knew, we were indeed alone here in this shadowy hall, alone and without the thought of someone walking in on us, or eavesdropping for that matter. I returned to him for a stare at his chest and then up to his face. He reached up for my hands, both of which rested upon his chest: his fingers curled around my wrists.  
“What are you doing?” I asked him in a near whisper. He leaned closer to my face, his lips parted and his cologne rising up in my nostrils.  
“Should ask you the same thing,” he retorted.  
“I was just going to take a shower—and then do a bit of homework.”  
“You know, there was one thing I neglected to tell you in my letter back to you—and that's even though neither of us know each other very well, I do find myself—somewhat attracted to you.”  
“But—you're in a relationship with Gina, though,” I pointed out. “I don't wanna be—you know—'that' girl.”  
“Who said anything about you being 'that' girl?”  
“Me?”  
“You're not that girl. In fact, even if you're that girl, I wouldn't see you as misstepping.”  
“I don't get it.”  
“Finding someone attractive isn't a crime, Marie. Trust me. Desiring someone isn't a crime. Wanting it isn't a crime. You're not a criminal for going a little bit over the edge.”  
“But—I don't wanna be that girl, though.”  
“You're gonna be that girl. Trust me. 'That' girl means you made a mistake and committed some horrific crime. Like I said, desiring someone isn't a crime.”  
I swallowed. Something told me to trust him; I nibbled on my bottom lip as the towel started to fall off of my shoulder and onto the floor.  
“Do you wanna—go into the next room?” I offered in a near whisper. “My room?”  
“Sure. I would like some privacy, and I feel like you do, too.” He let go of my wrists but he held onto my hand so as to guide me into my dim lit bedroom. He closed the door part of the way and I started to breathe heavy at the sight of him looming before me. I set the towel down on the comforter on my bed and swallowed again.  
“So how do you wanna do this?” was all I could think of.  
“How about—first of all, I give you some kisses—like this—” He leaned in for a gentle kiss on my lips, followed by another and another. My heart started to pound inside of my chest. This was insane. I was actually about to cheat on my friend's boyfriend. I felt his hands slide up my back and it took me a second to realize he reached underneath the hem of my shirt: he unhooked my bra and my heart skipped a few beats. I wanted to do something with my hands for him but I had no idea where to begin.  
He spun me around so his back faced the edge of the bed. For a second, I thought he was going to lay down on his back and show himself to me, but instead he reached down for my jeans. I froze as he unbuttoned my pants with the use of the blue gray early evening light filtering through the shades over my window. I struggled to breathe but the whole instance was exciting that I could hardly contain myself. It was about to happen: I was about to do it with someone, not just anyone but Jerry. The phone rang but I could care less. He was going to eat two dinners that evening; my jeans fell down my legs and onto the floor. He lunged forward and pursed his lips to the sliver of skin between the band of my underwear and the hem of my shirt.  
I leaned back against the wall as he stripped off my underwear with the tips of his index and middle fingers. I breathed out a sigh through my mouth. Poseidon was seducing Medusa, but without the unfortunate result. Or maybe the unfortunate result was the knock on the door.  
“Marie?” Mom called through the wood.  
“Yeah?” I replied as Jerry tugged on the waist band of my underwear to hide my skin.  
“Your dad's on the phone.” I slid along the wall as he nestled back next to the nightstand, out of sight. I almost stumbled face forward opening the door and trying to hide my skin from her. I opened the door to see her holding the cordless in one hand. She knitted her eyebrows at my bare legs.  
“Where are your pants?”  
“I'm—changing my clothes,” I quipped.  
“I see.” She handed me the phone, and I thanked her, stepping back into the room and leaving the door slightly ajar to let in enough ambient light into the room. I brought the cordless to my ear and glanced down at the sight of Jerry crab walking towards me to resume what he was doing.  
“Hello?” I answered.  
“Hey, sweetie.” It was good hearing my dad's voice after not doing so for months. “—is this a bad time?”  
“No—Not at all,” I grunted out as Jerry slithered his fingers up my bare thighs.  
“How was school?”  
“Totally cool. I'm loving it here.”  
“Well, good. Well, I just wanted to call to say that—if it's not too much of an inconvenience for you—”  
“Go ahead—” I struggled to keep a straight face as he kissed the inside of my thighs.  
“Could you at some point this winter head out to Albuquerque and check on the pilot light in the furnace?” Dad requested. “You know. At least so it doesn't burn the house down.”  
“Right—” I gritted my teeth as Jerry's tongue ran against the inside of my thigh, dangerously close to my bare crotch. “Some point this winter, you said?”  
“Yeah. You know. You and Mark or whomever can make a road trip out there when you have some time and at least check on it, you know.”  
“Of course.” I tilted my head back and opened my mouth as Jerry's tongue slipped up inside of my lips. It was a feeling I had never experienced before, that surge of energy up from my hips and toward the base of my spine and all throughout my body. That euphoria I always heard about but never understood until now.  
“Well, I'll let you go, get back to your homework and things,” Dad concluded. “I have to get up early tomorrow.”  
“Okay, Daddy,” I replied, trying to keep myself together; I could feel my hips thrusting at the feeling.  
“Have a good night. I love you.”  
“I love you, too—” We hung up at the same time, but I almost dropped the cordless onto the carpet as Jerry fondled my thighs and slipped his tongue out of me. He stared up at me from the darkness, his tongue lapping out from his mouth like that of a dog.  
“Should I—I do the same to you?” I asked him, out of breath.  
“If you do, I might spank you,” he warned in a husky voice.  
“Maybe—I do wanna be spanked,” I told him, stooping forward. He showed me a mischievous little smirk before dropping back onto the floor and spreading his legs, thus showing me that thick seam making up the crotch of his jeans. I dropped down to my knees and set the cordless on the carpet so I could open the button on his pants. He lifted his hips so I could take them off for him and toss them to the side so they were out of the way. I reached down the front of his underwear for that bit of flesh, that length.  
“Come on, you little kitten,” he groaned, tilting his head back and showing me the shadows upon his throat. I had no idea what to do so I groped at his smooth flesh. Like caressing a thick, long cut of meat. In the dim light, I watched him part his lips and let out a silent cry. He gazed on at me, once again giving me that come hither look.  
“Do—Do you mind if I stay here tonight?” he asked, his voice breaking.  
“Not at all,” I whispered so Mom wouldn't hear me.  
“Because—don't mind if I—I make the sweetest of love to you, baby girl.” He clasped his hands onto the sides of my head and yanked me back into his face. It was the first time I ever made out with someone, and albeit there on the carpet of my bedroom, but I wanted something more than that. At one point, I lifted my head to look at his bare legs and his underwear, part of the way down his thighs.  
“You wanna?” he offered, his voice cracking. But I was way ahead of him: I clambered back onto his hips, one foot on either side of his body, and straddled him. His skin stretched taut against the slippery wet flesh inside of me; I gyrated my hips. Each time was more euphoric than the last.  
Our eyes locked as we fucked each other. I fucked him. I was the one in charge that evening, even as I climbed off of him and showered off for the evening.  
I had become Medusa.


	53. The Final Letter

I stepped off of the bus and headed onto the sidewalk back to my mom's house down the block. Gina's words still rang through my mind like a series of echoes in a series of catacombs. She was Jerry's girlfriend! I almost couldn't believe it. In fact, I did not want to believe it. There was no way this girl could be with a guy like him.  
I adjusted the pair of textbooks cradled in my arms before reaching up to adjust the strap on my hand bag and heading forward. The bus lumbered away from the curb once I had passed the glass case surrounding the cold grated metal bench. I considered checking the mail given the day was Tuesday. I padded down the sidewalk with the afternoon sun bathing over my head and shoulders. If there was one thing I did not like about San Diego, it was the humidity in conjunction with the hot sun during the summer time. But then again, in New Mexico we had scorpions, snakes, and large bugs coupled with the hot sun and the vast array of sand.  
Once the property entered my view, I thought about Dave and his kindness to me on the first day of school, and how he offered me a ride. I hoped to seeing him again given I was busy with school and he had Megadeth to tend to.  
A piece of shade cast by one of the tall jacaranda trees, those thick dark trees covered in large spoon shaped leaves, lining the block bathed over me: I breathed a sigh of relief as I removed my sunglasses.  
“God,” I muttered under my breath, “when's the first rain storm.”  
I reached the edge of the yard and ambled up the walkway to the ramp, taking its half out of the middle of the steps leading up to the porch. I grasped onto the banister with my free hand as I filed my way up the steps to the front door, stepping past the rock which hid the spare key next to the doormat from Mark's curiosity. I knew Mom was home as I opened the front door and entered the cool foyer.  
“Hello?” I called out, shutting the door behind me and taking off my sunglasses, and tucking them onto the collar of my blouse. “Mom?”  
I glanced to the right and the sight of the dining room table: I caught the sight of the off white rectangle laying flat on the wooden panel closest to me. I ambled across the carpet to check it out given it was the sole thing on the table. On the front of the envelope, scrawled in chicken scratch in rich dark red ink was my name, and in the corner, the return the address beholding the name “Jerry Fulton Cantrell, Jr.” My heart skipped several beats.  
“Jerry wrote back!” I said aloud; I scooped up the letter and scurried down the hall to my room. I left the door ajar as I lay my books down on the desk, and set my hand bag down in the accompanying chair. I slipped off my sandals before I sat down on the edge of the bed. I sat there, the envelope resting in both hands. I stroked the smooth parchment front with the soft pads of my thumbs. My heart hammered inside of my chest. It all felt like a dream, holding this letter, this letter right here, in my hands.  
I set it to the side, right next to my hip there on the comforter. I clasped my hands together in my lap and closed my eyes.  
I almost couldn't handle it. It proved to be too much.  
I stood to my feet and paced a bit on the carpet; I paused right in front of the letter with the tips of my fingers pressed together in front of my mouth. That chicken scratch glared back at me, like it was mocking me and calling me chicken.  
“What's the worst he could've said?” I wondered aloud. I let out a low whistle through my parted lips and lowered my hands to the lower part of my belly: butterflies swarmed about inside of my stomach. I fetched up a sigh and shook my head.  
“I need to settle my stomach first,” I muttered to myself again. I doubled back out to the hall and down the kitchen for a handful of granola and a glass of water. But once I returned to my bedroom, that letter still hadn't budged from my comforter. I sighed again, but this time I drank down the water in two large gulps and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I set the glass down on the nightstand next to the head of the bed.  
“Fuck it.” I picked up the envelope, turned it over, and, carefully using the side of my index finger, I opened the back flap to reveal the sheet of notebook paper, neatly folded into thirds resting inside. I closed my eyes for a second once I took out the letter and unfurled it.

“Dearest Marie—  
I want to thank you for taking the time out of your hectic life to reach out to me, and I want to thank you for taking the time out of your life to be an artist.  
I was going to write out this whole thing to you but we just dropped an album and we've been on tour for a while, and we're preparing on making a follow up some time, so I'll just keep this short.  
I never even met you and yet I feel as though I've known you for years. You and I, we come from hard homes and lives. I've got nothing on what you went through, though. I can't imagine being the new kid in the middle of the school year and then having your own sibling ditch you and your parents like that.  
I should tell you about this: there is a zine—one that's a lot like yours except it's more about like writing and poetic justice, things like that, as opposed to visual art like with yours—based out of England. I don't remember what it's called, it's like 'Water … something or other. I only recall there being the word 'water' mixed into the title and that's about it. Yours made me think of it given how pure and from the heart and soul your craft is. You put yourself into it and it totally shows itself.  
And if you're wondering as to how I was able to catch a glimpse of Painted in a Corner, you can thank Dave Mustaine for that. I guess he skirted circles with two guys named Rob and Dean who're big fans of the zine, and he was able to send a copy up to me here in Seattle. Layne loves the zine, too, and we were able to tell some of our friends about it, too. I can really see you going places with this thing. I mention the other zine... Water Shed, or whatever it's called, because I feel like that one set the stage for you guys. Don't tell anyone I said that, though.  
I don't know if you know her or not, but I'm dating this girl Gina... Gina Ribaux, you might see her at school because she's an art student herself. And she and I coined this phrase together, and we use it as like a promise of sorts, to keep our private life quiet against all odds, especially when say, she goes on to be a big name artist and I make my name as a musician. It's 'what happens here, stays here.' So, don't tell anyone I said anything about the zine in England, because even though I foresee a lot more—Layne and I call them 'riot' zines, because the authors are usually girls and they're causing a figurative riot with their craft—I do see things happening if the true origin leaks out. Also, don't tell anyone that I'm writing to you, either, because I have to admit, seeing your name in my mail stack and feeling curious at first had me feeling a little frisky afterwards, frisky like one of my cats.  
What happens here, stays here.  
All of my love,  
Jerry”

“What happens here, stays here,” I whispered, folding up Jerry's letter. I pressed it up against my chest and closed my eyes. “What happens here, stays here.”  
“Marie?” Mom's voice floated into the room from down the hall.  
“Yes?” I replied, laying the letter down on the top of the comforter. I stood to my feet but I needed to do something about that letter, the piece of paper folded into thirds laying right there. I needed to hide it somewhere. I picked it up as the sound of the axles of the wheelchair squeaked from down the hall. Keeping the letter folded, I tucked it underneath my mattress before returning the hall yet again to meet up with her.  
For a moment, I had returned to my initial thought of it being impossible that Gina and Jerry were in a relationship together and scrapped it. He did something nice for me, returning the favor for me and I was beginning to see Gina as a friend. I need not think like that. No way.


	54. The Beating Heart

I stepped into the library for the first study hall of the school year. A brand new year in a new library. I stepped through the doors only to be greeted by the cool blast from the air conditioner vent over my head and the sight of students filling each of the tables on the floor before me. I spotted an empty table on the far side of the room, underneath a window, and I crossed the carpet to have a seat for myself given I didn't know anyone there. I passed the end of the table to make the sight of the girl seated next to a second empty chair; she had her back to the rest of the room and her head bowed over the book she was reading. She had straight jet black hair and wore bright purple horn rimmed glasses. Even with her head bowed, I could make out her milky white complexion; when I came into her line of sight, I noticed her lifting her gaze at me.  
“Is it okay if I sit next to you?” I asked her, gesturing to the empty chair next to her. She lifted her head to push a strand of hair behind her ear and nod at me.  
“Yeah, go right ahead,” she replied in a light Southern accent. I returned back around the end of the table to take my seat in the chair and set my history book and my art binder down on the surface in front of me. I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand even though I wasn't sweating much.  
“God, it's hot,” I remarked.  
“I know, right?” she agreed, adjusting the spine of her book there on the wooden panel. “It's why I'm in here. I mean, I'm kinda used to it, but it does get pretty bad, though.”  
“Well, at least it's not where I'm from originally—Albuquerque, where it can easily climb into the triple digits on a day like this.”  
“Oh, my God. I would think at that point you'd hear the sun reflecting off of the sidewalk.”  
I chuckled at that. She extended her hand for me to take.  
“I'm Gina,” she introduced herself.  
“Marie—I like your accent, by the way.”  
She shrugged and flashed me a grin.  
“Eh, it's nothin' too spectacular,” she quipped, “my mom had the thick accent, whereas I'm like New Orleans light. Just don't say Nawlins to me—something about that nickname totally irritates me.”  
“What's a girl from the Big Easy doing here in So Cali?” I asked her, folding my arms over the top of the table.  
“My parents split a couple of years ago, and my mom's too much of a problem drinker that she couldn't take care of me and my dad was kind of sick of the South at that point, even though he's born and raised there. So—the two of us moved to Long Beach because it reminds us of home.”  
The front cover of her book lifted up just enough for me to read the first few letters of the title.  
“You're reading The Bell Jar?” I inquisitively asked her.  
“Yeah. It's fascinating. Some red headed guy gave it to me after a little music show up in Long Beach as a gift 'cause Dad and I were real kind to him. Some band called Pearl—something. It makes me wanna write, but I'm not that good of a writer, though. I'm more of an artist.”  
“Me, too!” I told her in a hushed voice. Her face lit up as she turned to me.  
“Really?”  
“Yeah! I started like an art zine of sorts over the summer. Do you wanna see some of the drawings I made for it?”  
“Oh—sure! I could use a break.”  
As she tucked her bookmark into the inside of the book, I opened my binder on top of the textbook to reveal the first drawing, a sketch of Jerry I had made over the summer with two graphites and Prussian blue colored pencil.  
“Is that—Jerry?” she gasped. I fluttered my eyelashes at her.  
“You know about Jerry?” I asked her, stunned.  
“Do I know him? He's my boyfriend.”  
I gaped at her.  
“Seriously?”  
“Seriously. We met back in February when his band Alice in Chains were recording their album up in Hollywood, and Dad and I just so happened to be hanging out up there together in an ice cream shop. We hit it off, and the next thing I knew, he was giving us his number. Within time, he asked me out and I became his girlfriend as of this past summer.”  
“Wow!” Although a part of me remained a bit skeptical about that. I pictured Jerry with a woman covered in tattoos and with long luxurious red hair, but not Gina.  
“That reminds me—he gave me this when we turned serious—” She reached into the pocket of her shorts for a narrow red and black Metallica patch.  
“I have a jacket at home that—I don't think my stepmom wants around,” she confessed to me, twirling the patch in her fingers. “Jerry tells me he'll try to scrounge for more patches—like he wants to find one from this girl band called Hole for me. This is just one of the patches he snagged for me when no one was looking.” She tucked the patch back into her pocket.  
“He's going to be at this show—a tour, actually, this coming spring—called... Clash of the Titans, I think it is? It's Alice in Chains with Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer, and they'll be playing here in San Diego—some time in May. I forget the date. Although—don't tell anyone I said that, though,” she begged to me in a near whisper.  
“Why's that?” I asked her in an equal near whisper. She swallowed.  
“Because anything that happens—should either be taken with a grain of salt lest it be left under wraps. What happens between us or anyone associated with us, stays between us and anyone associated with us. What happens here, stays here.”  
She lifted a hand to me with her pinky finger extended.  
“Anything that happens with us should either be left in the quietness or should be thrown in with a pinch of salt,” she repeated. “Promise?”  
I swallowed but I knew what she meant. She didn't want our personal lives exposed and it made sense. I hooked my pinky finger up with hers and we shook our hands in unison.  
“What happens here, stays here,” I repeated the phrase.  
I didn't see her again after that day, but upon walking to the bus stop, a tall man with long wavy red hair caught up with me along the sidewalk. I peered over my shoulder at his round face and large mirrored sunglasses.  
“Quite the warm day isn't it?” he asked me.  
“Oh, definitely. I'm not used to this humidity at all.”  
“You taking the bus home?”  
“Might as well. I don't drive and my brother's turned into quite the douche lately. I also just barely moved here and so I don't really know anybody so I can't exactly call up someone for a ride.”  
“Oh, man, that blows. You know it wasn't long ago I was living on the streets here in San Diego and up in L.A., with nothing more than the clothes on my back and a guitar. I know the feel of being the new kid, too.”  
We reached the glass walls surrounding the grated bench making up the bus stop. I stood there in the shade cast by the awning while he circled me to behind the bench to give his hair a toss and to stand in the light breeze blowing right behind us.  
“I'm Dave, by the way,” he introduced himself; I glanced back at him with a friendly smile.  
“Marie.”  
“You know, if it's—it's alright by you—when we meet each other again, and my car's out of the shop, would you like a ride home some time in the future?”  
“Em—sure.”  
“I know it's a little quick to offer something like that—you know, don't talk to strangers—and I don't know what it's like where you're from, but here in San Diego, we try and keep an eye on one another, especially those of us who are struggling, stuck in between a rock and a hard place, or painted in a corner.” He lifted his sunglasses to flash me a wink.  
“Is that why everyone's so friendly here?”  
“Maybe,” he replied. “Maybe not. Who knows.”  
He returned the sunglasses to his face right as the bus lumbered up to the curb. Something about this man left me wondering. He played guitar and he said “painted in a corner.” Perhaps he knew Rob and Dean?  
But like he said, who knows for sure, and I would remain curious all the way home.


	55. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Well if you set your mind upon it, I know that you can.  
> You've got everything you wanted,  
> you've done everything you planned.  
> So let me make an offer,  
> I'm only trying to help.  
> You can make your load just a little lighter:  
> all you got to do is share the wealth."  
> -"Hypnotize", Audioslave
> 
> I actually hit an accumulative total of 1 million words with this fic - 1 million! Since I sat down to write my first novel Anesthesia in September 2017. I hit that number from sitting down every day to write something. See, it is possible, earthlings.

Anyone reading any of my letters will know that I have a serious problem with obsession. I write whenever I feel like I have an itch I can’t seem to scratch, and I always confess to whomever I am writing to, but not right away. I was reluctant to write to him because of what everyone had said about him beforehand. But I managed to take out a sheet of paper and a pen, and I wrote it down when I got a moment after work.  
I had discovered him when he first joined Soundgarden: I had read in Mark’s subscription to the Rocket that he had initially tried out to be their new bassist following Hiro’s departure and Jason’s dismissal, and then re-entered the picture when Chris said there wasn’t really anyone like him. Ben was doing more than filling the void, he had become a new friend the three of them could depend upon to round out their band.  
I saw myself in him, given Mark and I moved to San Diego in the middle of the school year two years ago. I remembered taking the bus out from Albuquerque with nothing more than the clothes on our backs, and the tokens of our lives’ passions: for me, I had picked up drawing from a young age, while he was the resident cook. I was sixteen, while he stood at the ripe age of twenty one. Granted, Mark had graduated early due in part to his lack of desire to attend college at the time, but the calendar did not lie when it read the middle of February.  
Our father, who was heading out on business to Chicago, sent me to California to care for Mom after her fall which relegated her to wheels, but he wanted Mark to join me to help me finish out school. Even being a sixteen year old with her brother and her mother left her feeling a stranger in this seaside California town. Mark did not know a soul when he picked up his new job at the coffee shop down the street, but he still invited me to join him there during the summer when junior year finished out.  
I introduced myself to new faces every day at school, but it all felt so strange and so alien. On the first day of school, the day before Valentine’s Day, I walked through my first period English class to the empty seat in the front row and near the middle of the room, and all the while feeling their eyes staring back at me. I sat alone during break and again at lunch time: the only time I did not feel like a complete fish out of water was during my third tier art class. And even then I almost felt like an intruder, being a desert rat abandoning the windswept mesas and Joshua trees and moving to a beach town of surfers and blue temperate ocean as far as the eye could see. But on the other hand, I knew Ben was no different.   
An American boy born in Okinawa some twenty years following Iwo Jima, and during a thunderstorm at that. The family there lived on the base the first three years of his life before they emigrated to the country. When I read they lived in El Paso before moving out to the islands across the Puget Sound from the very heart and soul of Seattle, I nearly hit the roof. I had so many memories of road trips from Albuquerque to El Paso and then to Las Cruces: it almost felt like next door to me.  
To make matters more peculiar, we kind of looked alike: somewhat long coarse reddish brown hair that didn’t want to stay in place on our heads, luminous green eyes, pale skin… the only differences are he towered over all and had a slight, almost svelte body, while I stood at about middle height and weighing in heavy: I had struggled with my weight since I was about eleven years old, but the problem only worsened when we moved and I was not only eating at every chance but I was exposed to Mom’s cooking again. I missed it so much when she and Dad split up: I couldn’t resist, and several people in my family all speculated I would grow to be a “big woman” when I grew older given my heavy frame, and thus, I gained forty five pounds, with my body growing all full and plump as a result.  
She told me a skinny boy like Ben likes a girl with more flesh on her bones, and I took her word for it. I even drew a sketch of the two of us making love in my sketchbook: I later gave it shading and a kiss of color for my mid-term the week before spring break. But then the photo I saw of him in that copy portrayed him with a wedding band on both hands. Married. Married! Ugh, he was married! I drew myself making out with a married man and I gave it to my teacher for a grade. I received a hundred percent on it, but I still hid it in the bottom of my underwear drawer where no one could find it.  
But I had thought of writing a letter to him when I spotted the ad in the back of the magazine betting subscribers to write to him to see if he would respond. I thought it was silly to put in a gamble on a guy and a musician, and I thought that for days. If I was going to write a letter to him, it would be for myself and not some dumb bet brought on by some magazine.  
Thus, my motive was to reach out to him in the hope of connecting with him but I started asking myself more questions about that when Mark and I played their album Louder Than Love when he drove me to school on his way to work. Such an abrasive and raw album, and one that the metal heads sitting in the back of my art class obsessed over. I overheard one of them talking about Ben before class one day, in how he might replace outgoing bassist Hiro Yamamoto, and that was another hook of curiosity for me. But I took my time to write my letter to him.   
Whenever I found a moment, and most moments, I found late at night, after Mom and Mark went off to bed, and I had the munchies keeping me awake, I lay in bed and on my back with my spare purple notebook and a pen and wrote a paragraph every night before I fell asleep. I even wrote a couple of lines during study hall on Tuesday, given I had nothing else to do than do geometry homework, and that wasn’t due until the end of the week for two points. I introduced myself: my name is Marie Newhall, I am seventeen and originally from New Mexico and relocated to California and I found Soundgarden through my brother and through hearsay. Whenever I put the pen to the lined paper, I found my heart starting to race from the nervousness, given I sailed right into uncharted waters, something more of an unknown than Southern California, and then the word from the metal heads was that all of the kids living on Bainbridge Island must resist, and in many cases use caution, walking up to Ben Shepherd’s doorstep because he had a shotgun waiting for them on the other side of his front door. That explained the bet!  
But at that point, I was obsessed. He had disappeared back to his home on the Island after losing out to Jason Everman, who also contributed to an independent album produced by the small record label up there, titled Bleach. I needed to know more about this man. I was the new girl, and by the school year’s end, I still made no new friends—Mark, on the other hand, made several friends at the coffee shop. I wondered if Ben had more friends than just his wife, the few neighbors on the Island, and the guys from Soundgarden.  
And so now I was on a mission of sorts. I set out to write to this man, a guy seen as formidable and hostile by the outside world, to not only show him that he and I had a great deal in common, but it would be ideal if we came in contact with each other. I had no ulterior motives: I was merely someone who liked him and knew that if Soundgarden never picked him up, he would go on about his own adventure in life.  
Some nights, I walked three blocks down from our house to the pier to collect seashells and then take them back to my room. After washing them all clean with warm water and some soap, I had strung some of them together to make a belt to accompany my bathing suit; meanwhile, I took the others on a separate string to make a necklace for his wife. I had no clue what she looked like, or if she even liked seashells, but I made it anyway. I wore the belt around my waist for all of the beach days that summer, and Mom told me I resembled a mermaid.  
On the evening of the first day of senior year, I finished my letter to Ben with sleep riddling my eyes and the pen falling out of my fingers, and placed it on my nightstand right next to the necklace, and turned out the light. I fell asleep within seconds of rolling onto my side.  
I dreamed of that drawing in my underwear drawer, the one I had not seen in almost five months. Ben had his hands on my hips and the two of us danced about a sea of swirling graphite curves and spirals with a kiss of soft blue. Even though it was a drawing, I could feel him touching me.  
I awoke in the middle of the night feeling confused and nervous. I had no idea if it was from the dream or from the few hours separating myself from the first day of school.  
I lay there on my back with my eyes closed to try and fall asleep, but I never could take him out of my head, nor could I rid myself of the fact I had my first and only full school year here in San Diego, and I had no idea if it would go about decently for me.  
I climbed out of bed at about a quarter to five for a shower and to put on a pot of coffee for the morning. I also needed an envelope and a postage stamp.  
Lucky for me, the magazine had a number which led to finding his address on the Island and I had written it down the day before. All I needed to do was fold up the letter and tuck the necklace into the fold on the inside.  
Once I had dressed and brushed my hair, I took the off white parchment envelope out to the mailbox on the curb outside. I lifted the little red flag and returned to the house for breakfast and a cup of coffee before first period. I had a little worry in that the fate of the letter now rested in the mailman’s hands. That little red flag was the last thing I saw upon leaving the house with Mark, and I flashed back on my dream the night before. I could still feel him and his hands on my hips and the backs of my thighs. Making love with a married man? It made me wonder if I had something more than just a little obsession and seeing him inside of my own reflection.  
About a month following the first day of school, and a month after I had sent off my letter to Ben, I read Soundgarden was whisked off to Europe with Skid Row and Metallica, and none of the metal heads in my art class from the year before were in my AP art class for senior year, so I had all but lost my insider’s view into the world of rock n’ roll music, and The Rocket came once every Sunday so I had to go through the whole week wondering what went down on their end of things. Until then I had to study and prepare to attend school there in town: I decided that I might as well, given Mom wasn’t particularly healing all too well, either.  
She had walked with a cane since before she and my dad divorced, and after she had moved out to California, she had taken a tumble on the front stairs and slammed her knee against the edge of the step underneath the edge of the porch. The doctor told her she had sprained the ligaments in her knee, and then he later corrected himself, saying she had not only sprained ska ligaments, but she had cracked her knee cap.   
The first thing Mark wanted to do for Mom was build a ramp over the stairs, and thus he saved his money for wood and tools, given she had lived in the house alone. He also started saving his money for a place of his own; meanwhile, I had to scrape and break dollars to pay for my AP exams: three of them! And for a total of almost fifty dollars at that. I had to give up taking fourth year Latin because I knew I wasn’t going to have enough for all of them.  
I found the silver lining in having a much longer lunch hour, and that was taking the new Sunday edition of The Rocket with me to the library for reading. There came a point in which I began scouring the library shelves for more magazines and things for music. But given I searched about a school library, I often came up short. I thought of starting my own magazine, a fanzine.  
But at the time of consideration, I was up to my eyeballs in school work and senior activities and thus I had very little time to work on it. The times I sat down at the kitchen table with spare paper, scissors, and tape, Mark threw me a dirty look and as a result, I had to work on it at my desk. Mom, on the other hand, wanted to watch me draw sketches of the bands I had discovered in Mark’s copies of The Rocket, since I need not risk cutting out snippets from the pages.  
I titled it “Painted in a Corner” because I was an art student having to pay her way through school early, while her older brother seemed more concerned with helping himself than his kid sister and his handicapped mother: once he had the ramp built come midterms, he did nothing else to help either of us. I wanted to show him that I meant business with my art and with my zine that I made the front cover of the first edition a colored pencil collage of Soundgarden as they were at that time. The drawing of Chris I handed in to my art teacher for a grade, and just like with my drawing of Ben, the idea to write a letter to Chris merely fell into my mind.  
An exquisite and handsome man in his own right, with his long wavy tendrils of shiny black hair, and a broad chest over a slender body. Every time I listened to Louder Than Love on the way to school, I pictured him standing before a microphone with a guitar slung over his shoulder and no shirt over his body. I also pictured him curled up in the farthest corner of his bedroom with a book to read and The White Album playing on his record player. If I couldn’t find my way to Ben, then Chris would be the one for me.  
It was a bit trickier to write to him, given The Rocket bestowed him with more decency. I thought for sure I would run into a dead end, when I took a seat at one of the tables in the library during my lunch break and found myself across from one of the metal heads, who had a book about Led Zeppelin opened before him.  
Given I hardly talked to anyone, much less any of them, I was nervous to speak to him. He had nappy dark brown hair down to his shoulders, and with long bangs dangling down into his dark eyes. He looked as though he could very readily join a rock band of some kind, and he wore a serious, almost solemn look upon his face. But the Beatles patch on the right sleeve of his jacket caught my interest, and so I spoke up first and how my dad always put on Sergeant Pepper and the White Album for our road trips down to Las Cruces, and we hit it off from there.  
He told me his name was Dean: he, too, was the new kid, born in Newark, and he and his younger brother moved out to California five years before.  
He had just turned twenty-seven and he indeed played guitar in a band formed the year before and already garnered quite the following in town, but he had no idea if they would go anywhere given their record label kept them waiting for months on end. I asked him what he was doing at the high school and he said he considered working a job here if the band went nowhere.  
I asked him if he knew Soundgarden and he said he did: indeed, he wished his band could tour with them some day. He wrote a letter to their management asking if it was possible and that was the moment I knew we would go somewhere.  
I told him I was an art student trying to get into college and run an art based fanzine at the same time. That brought raised eyebrows out of him.  
He asked me if I planned on running a subscription and I told him it was just for myself but I would gladly reconsider it just for him. He gave me his number and his address, and then before I realized it was time for me to leave, I kindly asked him for the address of Soundgarden’s management and he was kind enough to write it down for me.  
The sole issue was I had to buy my own envelope given I had written and sent off letters to the university there in town. That took more scraping and breaking dollars so I could buy a pack of envelopes for myself.  
I sent off the letter to their management sometime in the middle of November. I even called up Dean to tell him about it and I caught his machine instead. Meanwhile, all I could do was continue to do well in all of my classes and hope for a letter from the school, telling me I was admitted. All the while, I gazed on at the drawing of Chris for the front cover of Painted in a Corner as he lay upon the surface of my nightstand. I found myself getting lost in the graphite and colored pencil swirls making up his long hair and the smoothed curves of his face and his eyes. I had made a good choice with Soundgarden. I just knew it, even with all of my brother’s dirty looks and my struggling to complete this first issue of my fanzine.  
I stayed in touch with Dean all through the holidays, especially since my brother had found a place of his own, clear on the other side of town, almost in La Mesa and near where I wanted to attend school. He seemed all too intent on leaving Mom’s house, even with Thanksgiving and Christmas upon us. Indeed, I saw Mark less and less as the first semester of senior wound down to its final days.  
The good news however was I found the time to complete the very edition of Painted in a Corner and used the rest of my spare change to make copies in the library. I had made a great deal of art for my class, in particular for a journal I started keeping right after I sent off my letter to Chris. I made drawings and sketches every day for it, whenever I found the time after homework. I was a bit reticent to staple the copies together at the left edge of the paper so as to make a book for the next time I saw Dean, whenever I saw him again.  
I had not seen him since the week before Thanksgiving and then he vanished for the days following off from school. I called him on Sunday night and confessed that I missed seeing him around, and I wasn’t willing to hitch a ride with Mark over to La Mesa, given he all but moved out of the house at that point. Asking him to do anything for me felt out of the question right then.  
I took a walk on Tuesday afternoon and thought of the letters I had sent off to Ben and Chris; I wondered if they received them, and I wondered if Mrs. Shepherd liked the necklace I had made. I thought of walking down to the beach again when I felt it to be too cold.   
A little black car pulled up to the curb to my left. The passenger window rolled down and Dean showed his wide grin to me. He asked me where I was headed and I told him nowhere in particular, and so he offered to take me to a nearby coffee shop for a little something to nosh on, as sort of an in between treat, before dinner and after lunch. As I climbed into the passenger seat of his warm car, I wondered what I was doing right then. I had made art of unknown men, one of whom I experienced a dream wherein the two of us were making love to one another; now I was with a man ten years my senior. But on the other hand, I was turning eighteen in April, and it wasn’t too far off. But he seemed kind enough to me to where I could begin to trust him.  
He took me over towards La Mesa and a small, cozy coffee shop, albeit with some metal music playing over the stereo speakers. I asked him about it and he told me it was Metallica and their album …And Justice for All. I was in awe of their unique sound: cold and hard, down to the ground, and moving in different directions within the same song; four young men spooked by the things going on in the world. They lacked Soundgarden’s weirdness and topsy-turvy swirling grooves: they behaved more like a serious metal band, tightly woven and not going down without a fight. I noticed something else about them: a striking lack of bass. There were those pointed drums that reminded me of a machine gun; those grinding robotic guitars; that powerful voice; but the glue had dissolved away, the glue that was the bass. And yet? It worked.  
Dean told me he wanted his band to tour with them as well, and his brother was the one taking matters into his hands in contacting their management. He added he had met their drummer Lars at a Black Flag show down in Chula Vista three years before, and admitted he was the sweetest guy, albeit a very talkative, outgoing guy and one who wasn’t for everyone.  
When we stepped into the coffee shop, we took a seat next to the window, and he took out a cut out of Metallica from his coat pocket: four young men, each with a grave look upon their face. He pointed at the one at the far right: he had fluffy bangs atop his head and long smooth looking brown hair down to his shoulders, a full face with plump apple cheeks, a small button nose, and a light five o’clock shadow about his chin and over his upper lip, and deep set eyes. Dean added he emigrated to the United States from Denmark ten years before.  
Yet another new kid!  
I told Dean I had finished the first edition of my zine and his face lit up at the sound of that.  
I asked him for another look at Lars: he had such a round face, only made to appear rounder from the bangs upon his head. He had such a solemn expression upon his face and he had an edge from the extra emphasis on his brow. I wanted to touch his face and push the hair out of his eyes. But then I stopped myself.  
I already had my heart set on Ben and Chris: my sense of obsession was coming to life at the sight of this Danish man before me. Dean then added he was tiny, too, standing at around middle height, and I only wanted to pinch his cheeks from thence forth.  
He told me to keep an eye out for the next edition of The Rocket the upcoming Sunday and they would appear in an article near the back. I was eager to have a photo of them and Lars in my possession, that is if Mark still had his subscriptions coming to the house and not to his new apartment. I needed to draw Lars’ face and I needed to find a way to him.  
But then again, Dean bought the two of us a cup of coffee each with the little money that he had with him. He said that the only reason he never returned to me was his tending to business, but he vowed to stay in touch with me, especially if and when his band ever went anywhere in life.  
He took me home by the time the sun had dipped behind the horizon of the ocean and painted the sky a rich, bright blood orange. He gave me a hug before I climbed out of the car and headed up to the front doorstep. He asked me what was the deal with the ramp, and I told him the whole story about my mom and her injuries, and I added the caveat that my brother was all but leaving the two of us behind. He then told me I could give him a ring at any given time if I needed to speak to anyone. Dean gave me one more hug before I climbed out to the twilight and headed up to the house.  
I entered the front foyer to find the house was deserted. I turned my head to see the mail laying on the kitchen table: the new edition of The Rocket had come early; I would also be giving it right back.  
When I took the magazine to my room with me, I spotted the photo copied edition of Painted in a Corner on the nightstand next to my bed. I had all but forgotten about it once I stepped through the front door. But Dean had already left by the time I returned to the door with the copy in my hand, and so I returned to the bedroom near the end of the hallway. I needed to draw for the upcoming next edition of the zine, and I had hope I would find a decent photo of Lars in the edition of The Rocket as I flipped through the filmy pages.  
Soon I spotted his round face and his deep Scandinavian eyes staring back at me; he had folded his arms over his chest and stood wrapped in black leather. I almost felt intimidated by him: I bore in mind he wasn’t very tall, but he had so much energy, even from the surface of the page, that I could feel him staring right through me. And yet, the longer I gazed on at him, the more I felt comfortable with him. Soon I was comfortable enough to lay him flat on the top of my desk.  
When I turned the page to make sure there was nothing more to pick from, I spotted a shot of a man sitting in a wicker chair as if he was the Virgin Mary. I stared into his eyes: where I felt intimidated by Lars, I couldn’t stop looking at him, into his icy blue eyes. He had long, straight golden blond hair down past his shoulders, a diamond shaped jaw, and a pointed nose with a perfectly straight nose. He wore a black jacket and petted a Siamese cat which lay curled up in his lap. The caption at the bottom of the page said his name was Jerry Cantrell of the Seattle band Alice In Chains.  
Needless to say, I was mesmerized by him, even as I was drawing Lars, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Those steely eyes staring back at me and burning into my brain like the cherries of cigarettes.  
Lars, on the other hand, was quite lovely the longer I kept him under my examination. I wanted to see him smile, given he had such soft looking chubby little cheek bones. I pictured myself running my fingers through his fine hair and over the skin on his face. But Jerry kept interfering with my train of thought. Whenever I looked into Lars’ luminous eyes, I pictured him. His full face led me to think that diamond shaped jawline, so strong and so powerful.  
Once I had finished drawing the graphite of Lars, I remained there before the edge of the desk with my pencil in hand and a warmth blooming over my face. I paid attention to the noises of the house. I was still all alone.  
I turned the page again and gazed on at Jerry.  
I couldn’t explain it: I had fallen into a groove of making art of musicians and then subsequently reaching out to them via letter. I was obsessed with them.  
This is the beginning of a rather messy, rather interesting story between me and these five men, and how I was about to be painted in a corner with only one of them.


End file.
